Life and Death Row

SBS Viceland, 8.30pm

This harrowing true crime series focuses on the trial of a different death row inmate each week. In this episode it's Guy Heinz jnr, who was charged with the murder of eight people, most of them family members. The level of access and detail here is extraordinary: we don't just get to see police interviews, footage from the trial or interviews with the legal teams. There are interviews with jurors, too, and videos and photographs from the crime scene – which in this case are pretty gruesome.

Heinz, 22 at the time of his arrest, spent four years on death row before even getting to trial. And as with all these kinds of documentaries, while the individual cases are compelling what's most fascinating – and disturbing — is the process. The thoroughness of the investigation, or otherwise. The competence of the legal teams. The attitudes of the jurors, their sometimes-implacable prejudice and chilling lack of empathy. Which all add up to a profoundly flawed system that nevertheless frequently results in State-sanctioned murder.