White House Farm is a dramatisation of real events, so things that might otherwise be treated as spoilers are unmarked on this page.
A 2020 mini-series about the conviction of Jeremy Bamber for the 1985 murder of his family. It stars Freddie Fox as Jeremy, Alexa Davies as his girlfriend, Julie Mugford, Alfie Allen as Bamber's Australian friend Brett, Gemma Whelan as his cousin Ann Eaton, who comes to suspect his guilt, and Mark Addy as the only policeman willing to listen to Ann's concerns.
Tropes:
- Aborted Arc: In the first episode, Colin discovers a disturbing drawing one of the boys has done of his grandmother, leading the audience to expect possible cruelty by the Grandmother, but other than a minor dispute about prayers, this doesn't really go anywhere.
- Adoption Angst: Jeremy lashes out at Ann over this, claiming she feels entitled to what the family left behind because she is blood related while he was adopted. Notably Sheila was also adopted but didn't appear to feel the same way.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Bambers. Jeremy is callous and narcissistic at best, and a drug dealer and remorseless murderer at worst; Sheila is schizophrenic; their mother, June, is a religious fanatic, while their father Neville tries to hold it all together.
- Blue/Orange Contrast: Prominently used in the first episode contrasting the warm tones of the house with the night outside.
- Censored Child Death: The audience is spared the sight of the twins' dead bodies, instead seeing only the reaction of the police to finding them.
- Clashing Cousins: Jeremy and Ann clash constantly, first for relatively petty reasons (she dislikes that he's adopted and that he runs the caravan site; he's jealous of her relationship with his mother), and that gets a lot more serious after the shooting.
- Clueless Detective: Taff Jones is more interested in getting the investigation off his books rather than finding out the truth. Because of this, he dismisses and ignores evidence that goes against the narrative he's settled on and heaps abuse on Stan Jones for daring to do detective work.
- Control Freak: Among other things, Jeremy insists on having the family cremated despite knowing his mother wished otherwise.
- Death of a Child: It’s clear that the deaths of the twin boys are particularly hard for the investigating officers to process.
- Depraved Bisexual: Jeremy is heavily implied to be one. He has a girlfriend, but that doesn't intervene with his extremely strange homoerotic relationship with Brett.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Both Jeremy and his sister, Sheila, qualify.
- Hesitation Equals Dishonesty: What helps convince Stan that Julie knows more than she's letting on is her hesitation when asked to confirm Jeremy's timeline of events the night of the murders.
- It's All About Me: One of the major red flags in Jeremy's behavior is how he focuses only on himself in the wake of the murders.
- Kick the Dog:
- Jeremy has his mother's dog put down.
- He callously refers to what's left in the house as "goodies" and only seems interested in getting rid of or selling it despite knowing what they mean to the remaining family.
- He also sells graphic naked pictures of his sister, Sheila, even after her ex-husband tells him that she deeply regretted it.
- Locked Room Mystery: Made into one of these by the dodgy lock, which can be closed from the outside.
- Madonna-Whore Complex: The way the media treats Sheila reeks of this. The fact that she was mentally ill, had a history of drug abuse, was a divorced woman and once posed for some nude photos are all used as proof that she was capable of murder. And her own mother shamed her this way after once finding her sunbathing naked in a field with Colin.
- The Masochism Tango: Jeremy cheats on Julie constantly, while she spirals further into jealousy. He's extremely manipulative and everybody can see that he treats her terribly. Her response to him suggesting Sex with the Ex is to try and smother him (only partly seriously) with a pillow.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. Both of the main police characters are called Jones, but they're unrelated.
- Only Sane Man: Stan Jones insists on following the clues and doing proper investigative work while the rest of the team is eager to close the case based on a superficial examination of the crime scene.
- Ripped from the Headlines: From the real 1985 Bamber family murders and Jeremy Bamber's trial.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When it becomes clear how badly DCI Taff Jones screwed up the White House Farm investigationnote , the new lead detective makes a speech proclaiming how the team will properly follow the evidence while staring straight at Jones.
- Rule of Symbolism: In the first episode as they are being dropped off and the farm the van is placed in the center of the frame with Sheila alone on one side and the rest of the family together on the other, representing her isolation due to her mental illness.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Sheila shows one in the first episode to demonstrate her schizophrenia, and Truth in Television as it's known for causing a flat affect.
- Treated Worse than the Pet: Jeremy angrily claims that his late mother June loved her dog more than him; it's unclear how true this is as while his mother is clearly fond of the dog we don't see enough of Jeremy and June's interactions prior to her murder, though it is indicated their relationship was strained. Jeremy is bitter enough over it that when the dog comes into his care, he has him put to sleep rather than giving it away, appalling his cousin.
