THE writer of a new drama based around a Wiltshire Police detective quitting the force after breaking police conduct to get a confession from the killer of two Swindon women called it 'a moral conundrum for our age'.

Jeff Pope wrote ITV series The Confession about Steve Fulcher taking taxi driver Christopher Halliwell into the Wiltshire countryside instead of police custody in 2011 without cautioning him or allowing him access to a solicitor.

Halliwell admitted to killing Sian O'Callaghan and Becky Godden but these admissions were inadmissible and almost derailed the case. Mr Fulcher resigned after Halliwell went to prison.

Mr Pope told the BBC that he believes Fulcher "has an aspect to him that is like a form of PTSD... he's very burnt".

"Watching the series with him afterwards, it was almost unbearable. He [was] kind of crawling up the walls.

"He just found it so difficult because you've managed to take him straight back into the most awful events of his life."

Both of the victims' families were consulted as part of the writer's research.

He added: "It becomes about a man who does what I would say is the right thing but... loses everything because of it.

"One of the duties of a factual drama is to make the audience think and to challenge them. Have we arrived at a point where the police are too emasculated?

"If it was our child in that same situation, and a police officer was faced with the same set of circumstances.. what would we want them to do?"