Screenwriter Tony Grisoni and actor Mark Addy reflect on making Red Riding, the acclaimed 2009 crime trilogy adapted from David Peace's Yorkshire noir novels, which dramatised corruption and violence linked to real cases including the Peter Sutcliffe and Stefan Kiszko investigations. Grisoni describes being both drawn to and repelled by the source material's anger and injustice, and the challenge of condensing Peace's dense, experimental novels while keeping the worst violence off-screen to let audiences imagine its horror. The production, made on Equity minimum with no trailers or green rooms, has gone on to be praised by critics such as David Thomson, who called it "better than The Godfather", and cited by Nic Pizzolatto as an influence on True Detective.

Grisoni began adapting the quartet in 2006 after producer Andrew Eaton approached him, and each film – 1974, 1980 and 1983 – was given a different director and stylistic reference point, with budget constraints forcing the cancellation of a planned fourth instalment, 1977. The cast included David Morrissey, Sean Harris, Maxine Peake, Rebecca Hall, Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Peter Mullan and Daniel Mays, the latter playing a character based on Stefan Kiszko, who was wrongly imprisoned for 16 years and died 18 months after his 1992 release. Addy recalls joining the project purely on the strength of the scripts and cast despite being warned there was "no money in this".