A matter of life and death

The following paragraph summarizes the plot of the television program with the largest UK audience of 2008. People interested in the exposure of female on male domestic violence could hardly have asked for a better Christmas present, watched as it was by 14.3 million people on Christmas day:

A woman feigns distress to encourage a vulnerable and gullible man to risk serious injury to save her. She manipulates her way into his home where she takes obsessive control. She demonstrates a violent temper when thwarted in a cold-blooded attempt to injure and possibly kill the man. She uses self-injury and false accusation to discredit the man's friend and her sidekick shows obvious signs of ongoing abuse. She is significantly overweight and resents and blames men for this, claiming that her overeating is their fault. She is determined to take her revenge on men and does so by killing 12 of them, this latest being her intended 13th victim. When she is exposed as a serial killer and removed from the scene, her sidekick and victim both show considerable distress, typical of victims of domestic violence who are unable to accept what their tormentor has done to them, preferring to believe in the myth that was used to control them.

Would you believe this is a half-hour Wallace and Gromit special titled "A Matter of Loaf and Death"? In terms of entertainment, I would not rate this as Nick Park's best, but it is certainly his effort for which I am most grateful. It was made for British TV, but I'm sure it will make the rounds of many other countries too, keep an eye open for it.