The first of three programmes on crimes by young offenders looks into the mugging of two men on Hungerford Bridge which ended with them being thrown unconscious into the river, where one drowned. Much of it was captured on surveillance cameras which helped to find the killers; the video footage showed them laughing as they left the scene. The perpetrators were five boys and a girl who used to hang around with the outcasts of London’s West End. The film meets the dead man’s parents and the killers’ families and friends, in a convincing attempt to understand this “senseless” crime. This is one of the best documentaries of its kind, at once an inquest, a memorial, an explanation and a warning.

Robin Buss