Reception[edit]

Ed Cumming of The Independent rated the series with four stars out of five, writing "In less sensitive hands, a case like this could lend itself to prurience or melodrama, but Neil Mackay's [sic] script and David Blair's direction deftly avoid these traps".^[10] In The Guardian, Lucy Mangan gave a three-star rating, saying "The drama does a good job of making the victims... live again" but also noted "Beyond that and despite the usual great work of Sheridan Smith and others, the drama never catches fire".^[11] Hugo Rifkind of The Times wrote, "Superficially, the most interesting thing about Four Lives was the casting of the great Stephen Merchant as Port. There's something intrinsically chilling about a comedian as a killer, but Merchant was more blank than sinister. This didn't particularly matter because although Port inevitably sat at the heart of Four Lives, this was more a story about police incompetence".^[12]