Red Riding: 1974

Red Riding: 1974 is the first of three feature-length adaptations of David Peace's Red Riding novel cycle, made for Channel 4's Film4 strand and broadcast on consecutive Thursdays in March 2009. The trilogy as a whole is one of the most ambitious projects in the British television film tradition, three films, three directors, three time periods, all set in Yorkshire under the long shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation. Julian Jarrold directs this opening instalment; Tony Grisoni adapted the screenplay across all three films.

The cast is one of the strongest assembled for a British television production of its decade: Andrew Garfield in his pre-Social Network breakthrough, Eddie Marsan, Sean Bean, Rebecca Hall, David Morrissey, Warren Clarke, John Henshaw and Anthony Flanagan. Cinematography is by Rob Hardy, who shot the film on Super 16 to give it a deliberately granular, period-correct television look distinct from the other two trilogy entries.

The trilogy as a whole received a limited theatrical release in the United States via IFC Films later in 2009, where it ran on the festival circuit and was widely reviewed as a single nine-hour work. It picked up a BAFTA for Best Photography and Lighting (Fiction) and consolidated Garfield's profile internationally. Among critics it is now treated alongside The Wire and State of Play as one of the most accomplished long-form crime narratives of the late 2000s.