| Genre: | Crime drama |
| Director: | Malcolm McKay |
| Composer: | Nick Bicât |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Num Episodes: | 1 |
| Producer: | Mervyn Gill-Dougherty |
| Editor: | Masahiro Hirakubo |
| Cinematography: | Sean Van Hales |
| Runtime: | 100 minutes |
| Company: | BBC Worldwide |
| Channel: | BBC2 |
Cruel Train (also known as The Beast in Man[1]) is a British television crime drama, written and directed by Malcolm McKay, and first broadcast on BBC2 on 22 December 1996.[2] Based on Émile Zola's 1890 novel La Bête humaine, and set during the Blitz, the film stars David Suchet as Ruben Roberts, a railway official who discovers that his wife, Selina (Saskia Reeves), was sexually abused as a child by the Chairman of the Line, Arthur Grandridge (David Belcher), who is her godfather.[3] Assisted by Selina, Ruben plots to murder Grandridge on the Brighton Express.[4]
Filming for Cruel Train took place at Pebble Mill Studios between 25 November and 22 December 1994, with a budget of £1.25 million. The set was built entirely from scratch in a disused warehouse on the site of the former GEC turbine and transformer works, which was demolished shortly after filming ceased.[5] In 1996, Cruel Train was nominated for the British Academy Television Craft Award for Best Original Television Music. Despite remaining commercially unreleased on VHS or DVD, Cruel Train is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in the United States.[4]