How did gun violence in Nottingham inspire the BBC hit series Sherwood?

The return of the BBC series Sherwood has viewers in its grip once again.

The gripping, gritty drama focuses on gun violence and gangs in post-industrial Nottingham.

However, some viewers have taken to social media to express doubts about the credibility of the opening storylines.

Warning: This article contains spoilers from episodes of the second series

Sherwood is written by award-winning Nottinghamshire playwright James Graham.

It begins with a disclaimer. The drama is “inspired by stories and events” in the author’s community, but “all characters and events are fictionalized.”

I have been writing true crime stories for the BBC in Nottingham for over twenty years.

Many of Sherwood’s latest series feel remarkably familiar.

Some of the storylines are reminiscent of the headlines from the early 2000s, when the tabloids renamed Nottingham “Shottingham” and “Assassination City”.

Gun crime increased due to murders, revenge attacks and police corruption.

To what extent does Sherwood’s fictional plot match the real-life characters and crimes?

Oliver Huntingdon plays a new, unpredictable character, Ryan Bottomley, who sets in motion a cycle of revenge by shooting and killing the son of a notorious criminal.

Ryan’s character is similar to Michael O’Brien’s, who was imprisoned for the fatal shooting of Marvyn Bradshaw outside the Sporting Chance pub in Bulwell, Nottingham, in August 2003.

O’Brien’s target was believed to be Marvyn’s childhood friend Jamie Gunn, who was in the same car.

Jamie was the cousin of a notorious Nottingham criminal, Colin Gunn, and died of pneumonia a year later after spiralling downwards.

When O’Brien was sentenced in 2004, he shouted insults at Marvyn’s family sitting in the public gallery. The fictional Ryan in Sherwood did the same.

Ryan’s adoptive mother, Pam Bottomley, and her brother, Dennis, are played by Sharlene Whyte and David Harewood.

The fictional story of the Bottomleys in Sherwood closely parallels what happened twenty years ago to Michael O’Brien’s innocent mother and stepfather, Joan and John Stirland.

The Stirlands fled their Nottingham home after shots were fired through their front window.

In August 2004, the couple were shot dead by two hitmen at their bungalow on the Lincolnshire coast at Trusthorpe.

They were traced to Trusthorpe by Colin Gunn, one of the three men who life imprisonment for conspiracy to murder the Stirlands. The two gunmen were never caught.

In Sherwood, Pam Bottomley attempts to express her concerns to her police contact shortly before the couple’s murder, only to be intercepted by an officer who lies to her and does not pass on her concerns.

Could the fictional officer have been inspired by a corrupt detective who passed intelligence to Colin Gunn and was paid in designer suits?

Detective Charles Fletcher was seeking confidential information about Gunn, just two days before the Stirlands were shot dead in Trusthorpe.

He also sought information about the Stirlands’ previous address in Nottingham, after shots had been fired through their window.

The former detective was sentenced to seven years in prison after he was caught by internal investigators while bugging him at a Nottingham police station.

Lorraine Ashbourne returns to Sherwood as Daphne Sparrow, the matriarch of a criminal family who was an undercover police officer during the miners’ strike.

The infamous ‘spy’ from Nottinghamshire had a very different story behind the scenes.

Mark Kennedy was a married Metropolitan Police officer who spent seven years pretending to be an environmental activist.

Kennedy infiltrated the Sumac Centre in Nottingham and had intimate relationships with several women under his pseudonym Mark Stone.

He was exposed in 2010 after a court case failed after it emerged that Kennedy was part of a group accused of plotting to close Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire.

That led to similar revelations about other officers, prompting a major public inquiry into undercover policing.

David Morrisey’s character, Ian St Clair, has quit his job as a senior police officer and now heads Sherwood’s fictional “Violence Intervention Team”.

Its storyline mirrors the careers of several former police officers after they left Nottinghamshire Police.

David Wakelin later became head of the local Violence Reduction Unit, helping vulnerable young people to deter them from serious crime.

Another former Nottinghamshire police officer, Gary Godden, is now the local police chief.

Mr Godden recently told the BBC that good policing is not just about enforcement. The fictional Ian St Clair used an almost identical phrase in Sherwood.

If you’ve watched Sherwood, you know there are some stark differences between the real events and the storyline that inspired the film.

The fictional plot and characters took this drama to a whole other level.

But it also sheds light on why Nottingham went through such dark times so many years ago.

And it raises a simple question: Is truth stranger than fiction?

The final episodes of Sherwood are on BBC One at 9pm on 8-9 September and will be available afterwards on BBC iPlayer