Shoot to Kill (1990 TV drama)

Shoot to Kill
Promotional image: Jack Shepherd as DCC John Stalker
Genre	Television drama documentary
Written by	Michael Eaton
Directed by	Peter Kosminsky
Starring	Jack Shepherd David Calder T. P. McKenna
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	2
Production
Producer(s)	Nigel Stafford-Clark
Running time	120 and 60+70 minutes
Production company(s)	Zenith Productions for Yorkshire Television
Release
Original network	ITV
Picture format	625 line (576i) PAL 4:3
Original release	3 June – 4 June 1990

Shoot to Kill is a four-hour drama documentary reconstruction of the events that led to the 1984–86 Stalker Inquiry into the shooting of six terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland in 1982 by a specialist unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), allegedly without warning (the so-called shoot-to-kill policy); the organised fabrication of false accounts of the events; and the difficulties created for the inquiry team in their investigation.

The film, written by Michael Eaton and directed by Peter Kosminsky, was made by the ITV company Yorkshire Television, and screened in two parts over successive nights in June 1990. However, the programme was not broadcast in Northern Ireland itself, a precaution that Ulster Television said reflected legal advice that it might prejudice future inquests on the deceased, which had been suspended.

The programme was made with the co-operation of John Thorburn, Stalker's deputy with day-to-day responsibility on the inquiry, and was said to reveal significant new information about the underlying events and how the inquiry had progressed.

Shoot to Kill was widely applauded by critics. It won the 1990 award for Best Single Drama from both the Royal Television Society and the Broadcasting Press Guild, and a nomination in that category for a BAFTA Award. The score was written by Rachel Portman.

The first two-hour part dramatises the events in late 1982 that lay behind the inquiry: the killing of three policemen by a massive landmine at Kinnego embankment in County Armagh; the fatal shooting of three members of the IRA, who turned out to be unarmed, in a car at Craigavon; the shooting dead of civilian Michael Tighe and wounding of Martin McCauley, also found to be unarmed, at a hayshed in Ballyneery near Lurgan; and the killing of two INLA members, again discovered to be unarmed, in a car at Mullacreavie Park, near Armagh; along with the creation of adjusted or fabricated accounts of the actions of RUC Special Support Unit members in the events, some of which unravelled in court in March 1984.