Timothy Spall delivers a tour de force in this addictive tragedy

The Sixth Commandment ★★★★
Wednesday (September 4) SBS, 9.25pm

“I want us to consider the commandments,” says Ben Field (Eanna Hardwicke) in the short, unsettlingly calm narration over the opening shots of The Sixth Commandment.

Timothy Spall in The Sixth Commandment: He breathes life into the conflicted duality of Peter Farquhar.Credit: Amanda Searle

They’re shots of rural serenity, still fields and country roads with no people, just a black cat appearing like a portent of doom. Like the voiceover, the countryside is peaceful and tranquil, but carrying menace in its emptiness, its coldness.

It is the opening to a show about emptiness: the emptiness of a human soul longing for love, and the emptiness left behind when the darkness of human nature steals life and joy from the world.

The Sixth Commandment is based on a true story, the story of Ben Field, a brilliant and charismatic student, and Peter Farquhar, a passionate and inspirational teacher and author.

Farquhar was the kind of teacher about whom former students wax lyrical, whose ability to connect with young people and devotion to lifting them up through education made him beloved by generations of pupils.

But he was also a man who struggled to reconcile his devout Christianity with his homosexuality, and lived a lonely life, yearning for love and companionship. In Field he thought he had found it: the two men, widely separated in age, formed a close relationship, that Farquhar believed was the love of his life.

He was tragically deceived. Field was a cold-blooded, mercenary killer, given to cruelty and out only for personal gain. Worming into his teacher’s affections with pronouncements of his own religious fervour and understanding of literature, Field’s intelligence and charm won Farquhar over and spelled his dreadful doom.

The series is a deeply sad one, partly because, as a true story with its conclusion signposted at the outset, there is never any doubt that tragedy lies at the end of the tale. There may be flashes of happiness in characters’ lives, but we know that it’s an illusion.

But despite the sadness it is also compulsively watchable. It is likely it would not reach such heights with a lesser actor than Spall in the central role of Farquhar.

Sheila Hancock and Timothy Spall in The Sixth Commandment.

Over the last four decades Spall has proven himself a master of a wide variety of character types: the shy, bumbling Black Country electrician in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet; the oily Beadle in Sweeney Todd; the tyrannical patriarch in Wicked Little Letters; the obsessive, romantic artist in Mr Turner.

It would seem he can turn his hand to anything, and in The Sixth Commandment he delivers a tour de force. He breathes life into the conflicted duality of Peter Farquhar: the talented teacher delivering lessons with confidence and obvious love for his work, and the tortured melancholic at home believing himself unworthy of love and incapable of ever finding happiness.

Your heart cannot help but ache at the sadness in his eyes, the haunted expression of a man who has changed so many lives for the better but still feels his own life holds so little potential. It’s impossible not to understand just how easy it is for Farquhar to fall for Field’s undoubted attractions.

In the part of Field, Hardwicke turns in a performance worthy of going up against the great Spall. Wholly convincing in his seduction of the sweet, wistful Farquhar, Hardwicke never allows a winking villain to peek through the mask.

Timothy Spall in one of his other famous roles, as Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter movies.

He is a terrifying villain, all the more so because before his crimes are exposed, there is no hint of a villain in him. The unlikely romance between Field and Farquhar would be a heartwarming one, were it not for our knowledge of the atrocity that lies ahead.

As the series continues it covers the police investigation into Farquhar’s death, and the trial of Field and his accomplice Martyn Smith. The shocking nature of a true crime unravels and a gripping story is told.

As events widen out, there are other great performances, not least by Anne Reid and Sheila Hancock as other elderly intended victims of Field. But always at the heart of the story is this most heartbreaking relationship between a lonely old man and the man he wrongly thought had brought him everything he ever wanted.

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