Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell to be focus of new TV drama
Channel 5 has commission a one-off drama about Murrell’s embezzlement
A new TV drama telling the story of how Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, embezzled more than £400,000 from the SNP over a 12-year period has been commissioned by Channel 5.
To Nicola, Love Peter will be a 90-minute one-off special from Wonderhood Studios, the team behind Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.
It promises to tell the story of how Ms Sturgeon came to discover her husband’s crime, which included falsifying receipts.
Producers said it will draw on an extensive range of factual sources including evidence gathered by Police Scotland and TV and newspaper interviews.
Ben Frow, chief content officer at 5, said: “This is an epic tale of Shakespearean proportions – an extraordinary tale of power, envy, deception and greed.
“It’s both a high-stakes political melodrama and bizarre domestic drama that has dominated headlines and gossip columns.
“We will be pulling together the events and characters involved to create a compelling revealing drama, as well as answering that very important question – why would anyone pay £2,600 for a pair of salt and pepper grinders?”
David Abraham, executive chairman at Wonderhood Studios, said “This project reflects our growing ambition to develop quality dramas about contemporary stories that resonate with broad audiences.
“We are delighted to be working with the brilliant team at 5 once again”
Bafta-nominated director Misha Manson-Smith will direct the project, with the script written by fellow Bafta nominee Lucy Brydon.
Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, pled guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party earlier this year and was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
He used the money to purchase a range of luxury household goods, including high-end coffee machines, luxury watches, a robotic lawnmower, a pressure washer and a £124,550 motorhome, as well as spending £2,618.16 on two luxury salt and pepper grinders.
Ms Sturgeon was arrested and questioned by police in June 2023 as part of Operation Branchform, but was released without charge on the same day.
Earlier this month, she said she will not visit Murrell in jail or speak to him ever again.
“What he has subjected me to is beyond anything I could ever have comprehended,” she told Iain Dale’s All Talk show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. “I don’t understand why he did it. He had no need to do it.
“I don’t understand and I don’t think I ever will understand his motivation. But whatever that motivation was, he could not have stopped at any point and thought about me, and yet I was still, at least up until recently, worrying about him.”
She added: “I’m not going to speak to him, I’m not going to visit him.”
Ms Sturgeon said she did not know Murrell was going to plead guilty until less than than a week before he appeared in court, despite it emerging that he had been negotiating a guilty plea for months.
“I suppose there’s part of me still trying to understand this as well, because I’ve been so deeply betrayed by this person and yet part of me still found myself worrying about whether he was okay,” she said.
“I find that easier now that he’s no longer there in front of me.
“It’s a really complex cocktail of emotions, because you can’t just stop caring about somebody that you’ve been married to for as long, lived with for even longer.
“It’s almost like it becomes two separate people. There’s the person you thought you knew, that you still kind of care about, and there’s this person that you’re now only starting to know or understand.”
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