Ian Farquhar with his brother Peter, the hero of BBC's The Sixth Commandment Posted by Andrew Crowley
The Sixth Commandment is a new four-part drama on BBC One. A story of deceit, brutality and murder, this is a gripping work. And while its storyline – the story of a psychopath who sneaks into the affections of two elderly residents of a sleepy Buckinghamshire village, toying with their will before killing one and trying to kill the other – may seem like something from the dark corners of the past. dystopian storyline, its origin is based on real events. What's more, a real-life story that took a brutal toll on his loved ones, such as Ian, younger brother of Peter Farquhar, one of the victims of the bloody scam.
“After that, they asked me what I thought, and to be honest, I was a bit uneasy,” says Ian, who lives with his wife Sue in west London. “It took me a while to figure out what it was. It happens all the time, real life becomes something that fills the schedule. But that's my brother up there. It is our life. It's our trauma turned into entertainment.”
And it was trauma: what we see in four episodes is a catalog of horror.
At the time it happened, in the summer of 2017, it attracted public attention. I remember following every detail of what the tabloids dubbed the Midsomer Murders. But then I was perhaps closer than most. Peter Farquhar was my English teacher. And brilliant at the same time. His A level lessons at Manchester Grammar School were so engaging that they awakened in me a lifelong love of the written word. After graduation, we continued to communicate. The last time I saw him was a couple of years before he was killed, and my last image was of him giggling with delight at the memory in class. I think I still called him “sir”.
“Peter was well thought of,” his brother says. “We celebrated his life at Stowe School [where he taught after MGS]. After that, I could not get up from my seat because of the number of students who told me what a wonderful brother I have. One guy, who was then a major in the army, served in Afghanistan, mourned the man who helped him throughout his studies. That's the impact he had on so many people.”
Timothy Spall plays Peter Farquhar in the BBC series The Sixth Commandment. Image Credit & Copyright: Amanda Searle
The point of Peter – and actor Timothy Spall captures this perfectly in the film – was that he was not a towering physical presence. Rather, he commanded the class by force of personality. As a child, he was a contemporary of the respected actor Alan Rickman at the Latimer School in Hammersmith, and he continued to give his lessons in the same theatrical manner as if he himself had walked the boards in the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was training as a performance. Moreover, he maintained discipline with a sarcasm capable of confusing the most brazen bullies in the class.
“Perhaps he used that causticity too often,” Ian says. “We had some verbal skirmishes and I had to intervene to smooth things over when he went too far in a family dispute. But deep down he was such a kind man, a great uncle to our sons.” However, this is a feature of the story that the film attempts to explore: how did an intelligent man like Peter Farquhar fall prey to a con artist? And last but not least, how could he be fooled into believing that Ben Field, a man over 40 years his junior, had fallen in love with him?
“This is a question we ask ourselves all the time,” Yang says. “He hid Ben from us quite well, but we felt that something was wrong. The thing is, Peter trusted Ben, Ben couldn't do anything wrong, even if he did everything wrong. Here was a young man who shared his faith, who shared his love for literature, which apparently loved him. It was almost too good to be true. And it was.” The point is that Peter was a single man who never enjoyed intimate companionship, reaching his sixty years with a lonely hole at the center of his life. The film suggests that Field recognized unreconciled homosexuality and then preyed on him. But Ian not entirely convinced by this analysis.
Peter Farquhar with assassin Benjamin Field Photo: INS News Desk/INS News Agency Ltd.
“We knew about his homosexuality, we talked about it,” he says. “But that wasn't the driving force in Peter's life.” For Ian and Sue, Peter's death in 2015 was a moment of great confusion. This was a man who rarely fell ill, apparently reeling suddenly. The coroner's initial report attributed the cause of death to alcohol, which seemed unlikely to those who knew he was a man of moderation.
“Ben kept talking about drinking,” Yang recalls the central lie Field used to cover up the fact that he was systematically poisoning his alleged partner. “And the coroner seems to have bought into it. That's what hurt so much, Ben turned everything in Peter against him. Peter loved his wines, so Ben turned him into an alcoholic. He seemed to take pleasure in humiliating him.” This becomes all too apparent when the film recreates one of the most disturbing and public episodes of their relationship. This happened when Peter, who had stopped teaching to write novels, started his last job at the Stowe School. As if to mock him in a place where he was highly respected, Field added a hallucinogenic drug to his drink, and Peter collapsed to the ground in dismay.
Jim White taught at school by Peter Farquhar
“It was so awful, his wife Sue was sitting next to him as he tried to sign the copies and he couldn’t write his name,” Yang says, and every detail of the incident is clearly still burning. “Since then, Sue has talked me out of feeling guilty about it. But you can't help but look back. And you think to yourself: Then we should have intervened.”
After his brother's death, Jan was forced to communicate regularly with Field, arranging the sale of Peter's house. With every step, his annoyance—and suspicion—grew.
“He was weird,” he says. “The day Peter died, Sue asked him how he was doing. He simply replied, “Me? Well, I'm fine.” As if nothing had happened. Sue still feels guilty, remembering how she tried to console the man who just killed her brother-in-law. That's what he did: he deceived us all.”
Eanna Hardwicke as assassin Ben Field, who lures elderly lecturer Peter Farquhar (Timothy Spall) in. Credit: BBC
Unbeknownst to Ian, Field had by then turned his attention to Peter's elderly single neighbor, Ann Moore-Martin. He persuaded her to convey her will to him, as he had done with Peter.
“That was the only colossal mistake he made,” Yang says. “Peter used a local lawyer to change his will. And Field took Ann to the same lawyer to change her. They alerted the Law Society and the police intervened.”
When the criminal investigation began gathering evidence in the spring of 2017, Piotr's body was removed from the grave and it was determined that he had been poisoned. Field, who for two years believed he got away with murder, was arrested. And it was at the trial, during which Ian and Sue sat next to the confused parents of the defendant, that the horror of what had happened became clear. Everything about Field was a vile lie. Not least the fact that at the time Peter thought they were the subject, Field was in relationships with at least four women.
Ian and Peter Farquhar as children Photo: Andrew Crowley
“We felt so vulnerable, so angry when Ben testified. It's not the same as watching it on TV. This cannot be. You just can't convey the real feeling,” Yang says. “There came a moment when I couldn’t help myself, I decided to get up from my seat, go over and hit him for all the lies, for ruining so many lives. But instead, I got up, turned around, and walked out the door. In the film, I yell: “You lie to such and such.” Which I probably should have done.”
In the five years since Field was sentenced to at least 36 years in prison, Ian and Sue, comforted by their Christian faith, have slowly come to terms with the trauma, drawing comfort from the memories of those Peter inspired—but they don't watch. The New York Times. The sixth commandment.
“To be honest, we don’t want to go through all this again,” says Yang. “However, we understand that the film is not made to make us feel good, but for entertainment.”
This is TV, not therapy. Although Yang hopes that retelling the story may have one significant consequence. “To draw the attention of the general public to what might be going on in their lives, how people, no matter how strong and capable they are, can still be deceived,” he suggests.
Indeed, it would be a worthy monument to a good man.
The Sixth Commandment starts tonight on BBC One at 9pm; the whole series is already available on iPlayer
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