Four novels, three directors, one exploration of evil

“Riding’’ refers to the West Riding, part of Yorkshire, in the north of England. Place and time are crucial to the trilogy. The film titles make that plain: “Red Riding: 1974,’’ “Red Riding: 1980,’’ and “Red Riding: 1983.’’

The large and gifted cast is full of names that American audiences might not immediately recognize, but their faces are familiar: Sean Bean (“The Fellowship of the Ring’’), Andrew Garfield (“Lions for Lambs’’), Rebecca Hall (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona’’), Paddy Considine (“The Bourne Ultimatum’’), Eddie Marsan (“Sherlock Holmes’’).

“It really was an ensemble,’’ said David Morrissey (“The Other Boleyn Girl’’), in a telephone interview last week. Morrissey plays a senior police official in all three films. “We knew we were doing something special.’’

Based on a quartet of novels by David Peace, “Red Riding’’ mixes fact and fiction. The so-called Yorkshire Ripper, who brutally murdered more than a dozen women over a five-year period, is fact. Another serial killer, a pedophile, is fiction. Police corruption of “LA Confidential’’ proportions is fact, fiction, or some combination of the two, depending on whom you talk to.

The films link to form a claustral epic, moving back and forth between wind-swept moors and windowless interrogation rooms. With their blend of grimness and criminality - intensity, too - they’re equal parts police procedural, paranoid thriller, and kitchen-sink tragedy.

Ridley Scott has already purchased the rights for a possible remake. Don’t hold your breath, though: It’s one of 15 projects he has in development.

“The series isn’t really about the Yorkshire Ripper at all,’’ said Anand Tucker, the director of “Red Riding: 1983,’’ in a telephone interview last week. “The series is about something much older and darker. It’s even older than this century. It’s a very Blakean idea of evil. It’s that weird Yorkshire landscape.

“I’ll tell you what it’s like. You guys in America have this idea of the South, as in ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Easy Rider.’ That’s where civilization ends, with untamed and unspeakable forces. Here in England it’s the north. That idea of evil forces at work that affect the way men operate. It’s not just small-town bad men, it’s something much worse.’’

When Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast “Red Riding’’ over three consecutive Thursdays last March, it was a cultural event. That was owing to more than just artistic excellence. There was the novelty of each film having a different director: Julian Jarrold (the 2008 version of “Brideshead Revisited’’) did the first one, and James Marsh (“Man on Wire’’) the second. Each also employed a different format to shoot his film. Jarrold shot in 16mm, Marsh in 35mm, and Tucker in digital.

“It was rather an extraordinary beast in that each of the three filmmakers involved was given freedom to do his own thing,’’ said Tucker, best known for the films “Hilary and Jackie’’ and “Shopgirl.’’ “And it worked! It wouldn’t work every time, but it did here.’’

Tucker noted with a laugh that he consciously avoided reading the other two scripts or watching Jarrold’s and Marsh’s footage. “It ties up a lot of loose ends,’’ he said of his film, “but I wanted it to stand on its own. So you could watch it without having seen the other two.’’

That three-way division of labor might seem odd. But Andrew Eaton, one of the trilogy’s three producers, said in a telephone interview that that was the plan all along. “I’m biased, but I think it suits the nature of the stories,’’ he said. What hadn’t been planned was the films’ debuting on television. “Red Riding’’ was conceived as a theatrical release. “They were shown first on TV in the UK because that was the one way to finance it,’’ Eaton said.

Morrissey said he feels being televised added to the trilogy’s impact. “What I love is that it’s a television project on which the producers have allowed the directors to be cinematic,’’ he said.

No stranger to television, Morrissey starred in the British miniseries version of “State of Play’’ and played future British prime minister Gordon Brown in the BBC docudrama “The Deal.’’

“What usually happens with television is the audience is constantly reminded who people are. Will the audience remember anything after the ad break? In ‘Red Riding’ the filmmakers didn’t do that. They treated the audience with the utmost respect. The story is quite muddy at times, but it’s so painterly and beautifully told.’’

Conversely, there were ways in which the nature of television worked to the films’ advantage, Morrissey felt. “The more information you have, the better. The beauty of doing television in general is the fact the audience gets time with the character. You can be subtler in that way. In a one-off, or a movie, you have to tell stories with a much broader brush.’’

There’s a lot of information in “Red Riding,’’ although it’s rarely presented straightforwardly. The films have even more flashbacks than killings - and they have a lot of killings. Yorkshire slang and the furry vowels of the regional accent can further add to the confusion. “Part of the joy of ‘Red Riding’ is a dramatic puzzle the audience enters into,’’ Morrissey said. “They’re seeing things and not realizing the resonance until an episode or two later.’’

Morrissey had a simple yet effective way to solve the puzzle. He chopped up the three scripts, putting them all together in chronological order. He also had the script supervisor give him “a daily breakdown. It was important for me to know what my character knew at any one time. The way the story is told you’d think the character would know certain things, but he doesn’t. So finding your time scale could be even harder for the actors than the viewers.’’

It wasn’t just the actors who struggled. “I’d always get a little anxious whenever David would come up to me with that notebook of his,’’ Tucker said with a laugh.

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.