MUMBAI: This Sunday, Hallmark which generally caters to the entire family with heartwarming dramas and comedies, will tread a different path. It will plumb the depths of human darkness with the movie The Stranger Beside Me. The film airs on 2 November at 6:30 pm with a repeat at 10:15 pm.

The channel has billed the film as the true-crime television event of the year. The fact-based film deals with notorious serial killer Ted Bundy who murdered at least 36 women. It is based on Ann Rule's novel. Bundy was a close friend of hers and was an unassuming law student. Rule stumbled upon the ugly truth in the late 1970s while covering a string of grisly unsolved murders stretching from Utah to Seattle..

Rule is played by Emmy and Golden Globe winner Barbara Hershey. She is an ex-cop working the suicide hotlines in Seattle. To make ends meet, she indulges in another obsession which involves writing true-crime stories. She has a daughter and a seemingly good friend in Bundy played by Golden Globe nomineeOnce and Again Billy Campbell.

The film hints that there might have been a moment when he could have stopped. Rule suspects that his spree could have begun when he was still in his teens, and a little girl on his paper route vanished off the face of the earth.