Emile Hirsch & Holliday Grainger in Bonnie & Clyde miniseries, Bonnie Parker's real story

Almost half a century after Faye Dunaway famously played her as a hard-bitten killer, a new investigation has revealed that while Clyde Barrow revelled in his crimes, Bonnie often fought to stem the bloodshed.

“In so many ways she was innocent,” says Dr Beatrice Colin, lecturer in creative writing at the University of Strathclyde, who wrote the drama The True Story of Bonnie Parker, on BBC Radio 4 this week.

“Bonnie was the one who would ask Clyde to kidnap people rather than kill them, often driving them hundred of miles away then bundling them out of their cars across county lines. “Yes, she was involved with a very violent man but she was just naïve, and, you have to remember, she was very young too.”

Unfortunately Bonnie’s name was tarnished for ever when, on Easter Sunday 1934, Clyde opened fire on two highway patrolmen who stopped his car on Route 114 in Texas. She had certainly joined a gang of robbers who were complicit in the killing of numerous police and civilians, but Bonnie never fired a gun.

That didn’t stop the warped image of this sadistic, cigar-smoking hellcat capturing the imagination of the press and later inspiring the 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Dunaway.

The Radio 4 drama begins to dispel the myth and reconstruct her image as a woman who just fell in love with the wrong man. “They were Romeo and Juliet with guns,” insists Dr Colin. “The one account we have of her killing someone was later discredited, and in fact we have another account of that same killing and that’s when she was actually seen to help the dying men, cradling them in her arms.” Source: www.mirror.co.uk

The four-hour two-part Bonnie & Clyde mini is set to air Sunday, December 8th and Monday, December 9th at 9 PM simultaneously on A&E, Lifetime and History. Emile Hirsch (Into The Wild) and Holliday Grainger (The Borgias) star in the title roles of outlaw couple Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. The killer cast also includes Holly Hunter as Bonnie’s mother, Emma Parker, and William Hurt as Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger pursuing the Barrow gang. Bonnie & Clyde follows Barrow, Parker and the notorious Barrow Gang as they sweep through the Central and Southern United States committing small-time robberies and daring bank heists, leaving murdered police officers and civilians in their wake. Source: www.deadline.com