Landscapers: the strange true story of Susan and Chris Edwards

How Christopher and Susan Edwards shot and killed her parents in 1998 then hid their bodies is as strange and fascinating now as it was back in 2014 when they were sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years after being convicted of the crimes.

Yes, crimes: besides the murders, the Edwardses also committed years of financial fraud, using the money to fund their obsession with Hollywood collectibles like signed photographs of stars, sending them into exorbitant debt.

“How could an unassuming middle-aged woman and her bookkeeper husband come to shoot her parents at point-blank range for the sake of some obscure memorabilia? And how did they get away with it for so long?” asked The Guardian in October 2014.

“William and Patricia Wycherley were killed at their home in Forest Town, Mansfield, some time over the 1998 May Day bank holiday weekend. As soon as the banks reopened on the Tuesday morning, Susan and Christopher opened a joint account into which they would transfer the Wycherleys’ savings, pensions, disability benefits and winter fuel allowances, gradually syphoning off every penny. They wrapped her parents’ bodies in a duvet cover and buried them a metre under their lawn, a few steps from their own back door.”

In the HBO/Sky miniseries Landscapers, Olivia Colman plays Susan, a former librarian, and David Thewlis plays bookkeeper Christopher, and they are portrayed rather sympathetically. Colman’s Susan is frequently described by her husband as “fragile” and “frightened”, and she comes across with that startled and confused deer-in-headlights look of the mentally detached.

Christopher is very proper and polite and measured, but when you delve into the facts – some of which are well documented in the series, and accurate according to news reports – it seems like they were completely and utterly wackadoodle crazy. There was even a fake penpal friendship with Gerard Depardieu, with Susan writing letters from the actor to her husband and using a franking machine to cover her deceit – for 14 years!

While her forging these letters may have spoken of her love for Christopher – she started writing them after his beloved brother died – her years-long coverup of her parents’ death is less admirable. During this time, Susan continued “a web of lies via letters to friends and family and forged signatures on official documents, to keep up the pretence the couple were still alive,” the BBC reported at the time. “Christmas cards were sent to relatives year after year, sometimes ‘signed’ by the dead couple, sometimes written on their behalf by Susan.”

They did get away with the dastardly deeds for well over a decade, mind you, and the jig was up only when Christopher confessed to his stepmother. Why on earth did he do that? Granted, at the time the Edwardses were living in Lille, France, in virtual poverty, having fled there when the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions started making noises about William Wycherley’s approaching 100th birthday. The Queen likes to send a letter on such occasions.

Christopher was clearly desperate, but his divulgence, which his stepmom shared with the police, who in turn followed up on it and unearthed the bodies, ultimately led to the Edwardses turning themselves in. They were confident they had their stories straight.

The jury disagreed, however. 

According to The Mirror, a bastion of classy news reporting, the librarian-turned double killer was basking in her own spotlight – “beaming with pride at her crowning achievement of being played on TV by Oscar and Bafta-winner Colman. And in an astonishing jail interview, Edwards told the Sunday Mirror: ‘Prisoners say I should be proud that one of the world’s best actors is playing me. I am proud. I hope she can help shine a light on what happened’.”

Not so sympathetic now, hmmm?

Landscapers was written for Colman by her husband Ed Sinclair, his own act of love for her, and penned long before she became famous all by herself. “Sinclair wrote all episodes and Will Sharpe directed them, with the two collaborating closely on how to empathetically portray memories of events that are altered slightly depending on which party is recalling them,” says Variety.

While the facts of the case seem clear – hindsight is always 20-20 – what we see in Landscapers, with its unusually stylistic production leaning strongly into film and theatre as well as homage in the final episode to the Hollywood Western heroes the couple adored so much, can paint a different picture. We see what we are shown.

The surprisingly sympathetic scenes in Landscapers

Here are the moments when you’ll feel sorry for Christopher and Susan.

Episode 1: Christopher goes to a job interview, and the woman speaks to him in French, fast, as they tend to do. He looks tragically confused as it’s apparent he’s never going to be able to work in France. It’s after this that he decides to call his stepmother to ask for money – and offer what could be seen as an ill-considered confession. 

When he tries to explain to Susan, he says without money they’d end up on the streets eating croissants out of rubbish bins. “We’d still be together though, wouldn’t we,” she says with a brave little smile.

Episode 2: Christopher’s voiceover calmly instructs Susan what to do when they are taken into custody. As a woman so devoted to her husband, and so dependent on him, she is devastated to be separated from him and loaded into the back of a police van. 

Later, in her cell, her solicitor advises her how to answer – or not answer – the police’s questions. When this happens, she’s nervous and confused, and frequently fluffs her lines.

Towards the end of episode 2, Susan reveals to the police that her father sexually abused her when she was a child. “I spent my whole life trying to wish it away … all those years after school when she [her mother] was at work…”

As she describes how Christopher buried her parents’ bodies, she says: “He’s the only person in the world who has ever made me feel safe.”

Episode 3: Christopher discovers more frivolous spending, and  the letter from the Department of Work and Pensions. He berates Susan for keeping it from him. His anger hurts her. In his police interview, he says, “This compulsion is her way of dealing … it’s like it’s her way of trying to buy back the happiness her parents stole from her.” Presumably he’s referring to the Hollywood memorabilia. “William and Patricia never stopped being horrible to her.”

After further questioning by the police, which is not going well for her at all, Susan breaks down in tears, crying that she doesn’t trust her solicitor. “I don’t trust anyone but Chris,” she sobs.

Episode 4: Despite the guilty verdict being handed down, Christopher and Susan’s fractured reality depicts a far happier ending.