Storyline
Burke and Hare - The West Port Murders
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FORMAT: Limited Series: 4 Episodes

COMP: Peaky Blinders meets The Knick

LOGLINE: When two impoverished men in 1820s Edinburgh discover they can profit from selling corpses to an ambitious surgeon, a string of murders follows—pitting loyalty against conscience, and plunging them into a city where science, greed, and guilt collide with deadly consequences.

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In 19th-century Edinburgh, as medical science races ahead of morality, two impoverished Irish immigrants — the opportunistic William Hare and the more hesitant William Burke — discover a gruesome path to profit: supplying fresh corpses to the esteemed Dr. Knox, a brilliant anatomist desperate to stay ahead of his rivals. What begins as an act of convenience quickly spirals into premeditated murder, as Hare pushes deeper into darkness while Burke clings to a crumbling conscience. Meanwhile, Knox’s ambition blinds him to the origins of the bodies that fuel his fame, and local journalist Alastair Johnson, haunted by his mother’s stolen corpse, begins to investigate the disturbing rise in fresh cadavers.

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As the body count grows and loyalties fracture, tensions ignite between partners, families, and institutions. Burke and Hare’s deadly enterprise begins to unravel under the weight of guilt, suspicion, and public outrage. Helen, Burke’s partner, emerges as the moral compass he can no longer follow, while Margaret Hare reveals a chilling pragmatism. When a victim’s murder is witnessed by a child, the conspiracy begins to collapse that will lead to a trial that grips the city. With reputations shattered and lives lost, Burke and Hare delivers a chilling exploration of complicity, ambition, and the price of progress — a true-crime saga where survival breeds monsters, and silence is deadlier than the blade.