Plot: Albert Pierrepoint delivered groceries - and was a hangman. Following in his father's footsteps he quickly became known for his efficiency and compassion, rising to become 'the best in the land'. From early 1933, until the end of his career in 1955, he executed 608 people, including the 'Beasts of Belsen' (war criminals), for which he earned the gratitude of a nation. But by the time he hanged Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, public sentiments had changed... and so had Pierrepoint.
Alternative Plot: Albert Pierrepoint (Timothy Spall) finds great success as Britain's most famous public executioner, and his notoriety rises to a new level after he is selected to hang Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg trials, but the experience changes him, and he begins to question the morality of his vocation at the same time that abolitionists begin a campaign to end hanging.
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