There can be few people of a certain age who lived in Yorkshire in the Seventies and Eighties who do not have lasting memories of the reign of terror perpetrated by Peter Sutcliffe and the subsequent police investigation into the murder spree of the man who became known as the Yorkshire Ripper.

David Peace is one of them. Almost eight years ago, interviewed by this newspaper upon the publication of the third novel in his Red Riding quartet, Peace recounted some of his memories of the time.

They included listening to his sister saying her prayers before climbing into bed, always urging God: “Please don’t let the Ripper get my mum.”

He remembered the paranoia that gripped the area, wondering if the Ripper was one of his friends’ dads or, God forbid, even a member of his own family.

And when the murderer was finally unmasked as Heaton lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe, he recalls bunking off school with his mates to watch Sutcliffe bundled into a police van following his arrest, his friends larking about behind the cameras but Peace too scared to do so in case his mum saw him and knew he’d skipped classes.

Almost a decade on, David Peace’s four books have been boiled down to a trilogy of TV movies, under the name Red Riding, and they begin their run on Channel 4 next week, with the first instalment, 1974 (the first two books of the quartet, Nineteen Seventy-Four and Nineteen Seventy-Seven, distilled into one story) broadcast on Thursday.

It’s a controversial subject, both for film and book. But like Peace’s novels, the three films – each one helmed by a different director – concentrate less on the violence of the crimes and more on the troubled investigation into Sutcliffe’s self-proclaimed brutal crusade against prostitutes in the North.

The cast list is a who’s who of contemporary British talent: Sean Bean, David Morrissey, Mark Addy, Warren Clarke, Paddy Considine, Daniel Mays, Maxine Peak… with Joseph Mawle taking the part of Sutcliffe himself.

The three episodes are described by Channel 4 thus: 1974: Yorkshire – a time of paranoia, mistrust and institutionalised police corruption. Rookie journalist Eddie Dunford is determined to search for the truth in an increasingly complex maze of lies and deceit that characterises a police investigation into a series of child abductions.

1980: The Ripper has tyrannised Yorkshire for six long years and with the local police failing to make any progress, the Home Office sends in Manchester officer Peter Hunter to review the investigation. Having previously made enemies in the Yorkshire force while investigating a shooting incident, Hunter finds himself increasingly isolated when his version of events challenges their official line on the Ripper.

1983: Another young girl has disappeared and Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson recognises some alarming similarities to the abductions in 1974, forcing him to come up with the fact that he may have helped convict the wrong man. When local solicitor John Piggott is persuaded to fight this miscarriage of justice he finds himself slowly uncovering a catalogue of cover-ups.

But while David Peace and the man tasked with transferring the novels to the screen, Tony Grisoni, have based the stories on real events, efforts have been taken to create a work of fictional drama.

As David Peace – also the author of The Damned Utd, the story of Brian Clough’s 44 days as manager of Leeds United, which gets a cinematic release in March – told us back in 2001: “I did it out of sensibilities for the families of the victims. Even Peter Sutcliffe’s name is changed to Peter Williams, one of the aliases he used.

“This is a work of fiction, after all, and although I want to convey how harrowing this time was, I got into this through choice. The victims and their families didn’t.”

Grisoni said of Peace’s quartet: “They read like an English James Ellroy cut with Stan Barstow and drenched in the occult sensibilities of an Iain Sinclair. Here were fictions torn from the facts. Each book was powerfully contextualised; 1974 against the background of a hung parliament and the IRA bombing campaign. 1977: the year of the Jubilee and punk. 1980; Thatcher’s Tory majority and the Yorkshire Ripper. 1983; the Falklands war and Thatcher’s re-election.

“But the world of Red Riding is not purely material, it is a universe where the dreamed, the imagined, the supernatural is as alive as the natural world. We’re talking about people’s souls here. We’re talking about eternal perdition and the possibility of redemption. Yorkshire Noir. Dickens on bad acid. And that is what we planned to bring to the screen.”

The producers worked closely with Screen Yorkshire, the county’s development agency, who sought out a number of local locations for shooting.

In Bradford, they included the Connaught Rooms in Manningham Lane, and the old Koh-I-Noor Indian restaurant.

Sally Joynson, chief executive at Screen Yorkshire, said: “Red Riding is Channel 4’s showpiece project for the spring and Screen Yorkshire has worked for over four years to get it developed and funded. High-profile, pioneering productions such as this let other film and TV producers know that Yorkshire is pushing the boundaries and open for business.”

For those used to cosy Sunday night crime drama, Red Riding might be a wake-up call of a very different order. As Liza Marshall, Channel 4’s head of drama, added: “I hope Red Riding feels like a very different kind of television drama event; a trilogy of thrillers that will keep viewers on the edge of their seats. Each film has an incredibly compelling story of its own but the plot deepens and interlocks as each one unfolds, taking you into a new era of the corrupt, noir world they inhabit.”

Red Riding begins on Channel 4 on Thursday, March 5. A limited number of tickets are available for a special preview screening of all three films back to back at the Cottage Road cinema in Headingley on Sunday. Tickets are £5 per film, or £12 for all three, and may be reserved up to Saturday, February 28, by contacting the cinema on (0113) 275 1606.