ITV's Fred West drama angers daughter

ITV's Fred West drama angers daughter
ITV's Fred West drama angers daughter (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

An ITV drama being made about Fred West's life has been criticised by the daughter of the serial killer. Appropriate Adult, with The Wire star Dominic West taking the role of the Gloucestershire murderer, will centre on the time between his arrest and his prison cell suicide in 1995. Anne-Marie West, speaking in her first TV interview in a decade, said she was "absolutely appalled" by the drama, and that it was wrong to make the families of the victims of her father and his wife Rosemary West relive their experiences through the TV screen. She told Channel 4 chat show Fern: "I feel it needs to be said that these young women and girls, they shouldn't be treated as public property." Ms West also said she had been incensed when the team behind Appropriate Adult wrote her a letter which referred to West's wife Rosemary as being her mother - when in fact her real mother Rena Costello was one of her father's victims. She added: "It seemed so insensitive that they didn't even get that part right." When the drama is aired, Ms West said she had no intention of watching it. She has not co-operated with the makers of the drama. She told host Fern Britton: "I didn't answer the letters or respond because I have no intention of glamorising my father and Rosemary, and I don't see any reason why." She said she still struggles to deal with people talking about her because of her notorious father, and added: "That's something that I think will always happen, because they don't necessarily see me as a victim. "I work in the retail sector, and whenever anything is put in the newspapers it tends to start everything up again and it just opens old wounds."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.