The Force is a series of three observational documentary programmes created for Channel 4 by Oxford Film and Television and Patrick Forbes, following the work of Hampshire Constabulary.
The programme was intended to form the climax of Channel 4's unofficial season covering social institutions in the United Kingdom, along with The Family, The Benefit Business and The Hospital.
After initial confusion concerning forensic and DNA evidence, a numberplate led to Ziaul Haque, who worked in the same hotel as a Polish woman who had been reported missing.
Haque was questioned, but it was not until CCTV footage of him carrying a suitcase to his room with ease, before dragging it back down, was found that he was charged with murder.
[3] Rachel Cooke, writing for the New Statesman, said the programme "is compelling television, the kind that you watch with a queasy feeling, and all your fingers crossed", and added that it "has been carefully made, over a period of several years, and beautifully edited, and it tells you a great deal more about 21st-century Britain than anything in Ian Rankin.