Everyone has the right to protest or criticise when a drama depicts painful crimes, even if dramatised in a responsible and ethical way and having consulted victims’ families as we did on The Secret. But the idea that one should refrain from depicting such events, even after 5 years, strikes me as an unfair impingement on creative freedom, often voiced by people with an agenda that is hostile to such freedoms. By the same token, seminal works such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (the book and the film) would never have been made! By examining the motives and consequences of crime, society can draw lessons.