Note: contains discussion of themes that some readers may find upsetting.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

BBC drama Four Lives tells the story of four young men who were murdered in Barking, London, back in 2014 and 2015.<\/p>\n

Anthony Walgate, 23,\u00a0 Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21 and Jack Taylor, 25, had first started talking to Stephen Port on dating apps before visiting his flat, where they were drugged, sexually assaulted\u00a0and killed.<\/p>\n

Walgate\u2019s body was discovered right outside Port\u2019s home, while Kovari and Whitworth were discovered in the graveyard of a nearby church. Taylor was found a short distance from that location.<\/p>\n

The three-part series, which was originally named The Barking Murders, is told from the perspectives of the families and friends of the four men, who fought ceaselessly to uncover the truth in the face of a police investigation which was littered with mistakes.<\/p>\n

The families of the victims called it \u201cone of the most widespread institutional failures in modern history\u201d after an inquest concluded that errors made by the Metropolitan Police following Walgate\u2019s murder \u201cprobably\u201d contributed to the deaths of Port\u2019s other victims.<\/p>

$\""Four\"$ <\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
BBC\/ITV Studios\/Ben Blackall<\/i> <\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Merchant also went on to discuss how he personally found the experience of playing Port, who received a life sentence with a whole-life order in November 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a challenge, an enormous challenge,\u201d he admitted. \u201cI think had Port been the very centre of the drama, I might have been more trepidatious about trying to shoulder three parts like that. But I think the fact that he is this not peripheral, but a sort of secondary character in a sense, and we\u2019re not trying to fully understand him; he is a shark prowling the waters.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like what I needed to do was to construct my own interpretation of my own internal logic about how someone like that thinks. T<\/span>hey know they\u2019ve killed four men, but they\u2019re not going to admit it. So do they know they\u2019re lying? Or have they constructed a reality that they\u2019re now living by? Are they navigating their way between truth and lies?<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so a lot of the work I was doing was almost like a writer trying to write in my own head. What is this person\u2019s inner thoughts in those moments? Because otherwise you\u2019re sort of a bit at sea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cI also felt the story itself was just so, so important to tell.\u00a0 The idea that in 2014-15, you\u2019re still coming up against silence [with the police]; you still can\u2019t get through the door when you\u2019re trying to help<\/em>. You\u2019re not even trying to obstruct, you\u2019re trying to help<\/em>. You\u2019re saying, \u2018Let me ask questions. Let me see the forged letter [placed by Port] that was found on one of the victims.\u2019 That is what I just found so utterly shocking, and why I felt it was an important piece of work.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n
Four Lives will air over three consecutive nights <\/strong>on Monday 3rd January at 9pm on BBC One, with all episodes on BBC iPlayer from the same time. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n
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