The Essex Millionaire Murders: 'about As Good As True Crime Gets'

When Carol and Stephen Baxter are found dead in their armchairs at their West Mersea home by their pregnant daughter, Ellena, police are "puzzled", said Emily Watkins in The i Paper.

With no signs of foul play, the case is initially a mystery, but as officers begin to "dig deeper" it emerges that the situation is more "fraught" than the wealthy couple's "veneer of suburban bliss" first appears. Carol had been diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder, Hashimoto's, several years earlier but her peculiar symptoms "baffled" doctors. "Could she finally have had enough and decided to end things for good?"

The case gets "stranger" as it transpires that Carol was in close correspondence with an American endocrinologist, Dr Andrea Bowden, who promised to restore her health. But as detectives trawl through their emails, it soon becomes clear Bowden is no ordinary doctor.

True crime has undergone a "serious slickening" in recent years and thanks to growing surveillance in almost every aspect of our lives, it's become possible to "stitch together jaw-dropping raw material" and witness a police investigation develop in real time. This "bleakly compelling" documentary draws on a "wealth of resources", and "seamlessly" splices talking-head interviews with police bodycam video clips and Carol's video check-ins with Dr Bowden.

Through the Baxters' home-security camera footage, we see Ellena arriving at her parents house two years ago, peering through the window when they fail to answer the door, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. "The audio picks up her screams."

When a letter is found purporting to change Carol's will to leave the business to Ellena and close family friend Luke D'Wit, the police believe they have found their first murder suspects. The toxicology report comes back revealing that the Baxters died of fentanyl overdoses, and the pair are taken into custody: D'Wit is "preternaturally calm", while a heavily pregnant Ellena reels from her parents' deaths.

"I found the title of this otherwise meticulous documentary slightly tawdry and, indeed, distracting", said Carol Midgley in The Times. The couple's wealth isn't addressed and it soon becomes clear that the motive behind their murder wasn't financial. D'Wit, a "wolf in sheep's clothing", befriended the Baxters and, over many years, enjoyed "controlling and torturing" them, creating multiple fraudulent online personas including Dr Bowden who persuaded Carol to take a series of "health drinks" that would cure her Hashimoto's.

In reality, the cold, calculated killer was poisoning the couple who had "taken him under their wing", and watching their suffering play out via cameras he had rigged up around their house "for kicks". "How fiendishly cruel humans can be."

Packed with "all the intrigue of a classic whodunnit", this "absorbing" show is "about as good as terrestrial true crime gets", said Watkins in The i Paper. "ITV have hit the jackpot."