The parents of Lucy Letby, the nurse currently serving a sentence after being convicted of child murder, have complained to Netflix after seeing the trailer for a new documentary about their daughter’s case. In the first statement they have made publicly since her 2023 conviction, they say that the footage front and centre in the trailer – previously unreleased police video of Letby being arrested in her pyjamas in her bedroom at home – is a “complete invasion of privacy”.

These days, true crime is having a vogue not seen since the days of the Victorian penny blood

“Why is [senior investigating officer] Paul Hughes, with whom we always co-operated fully, allowed to show the world what took place in our house that morning and Netflix not even have the decency to tell us?” they ask. “We had no idea they were using footage in our house. We will not watch it — it would likely kill us if we did.”

Do they not have a point? On the face of it, admittedly, “invasion of privacy” may seem like a pretty milquetoast complaint in the context of the deaths of children. And it is. But the two issues stand separate, just as the seriousness of the Lucy Letby case stands separate from the frivolousness of the way broadcasters recycle it as a form of entertainment.

For entertainment it undoubtedly is. Even the trailer drips with prurience. It boasts, over poundingly melodramatic background music: “The........

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