Cruel Train is a British television crime drama, written and directed by Malcolm McKay, and first broadcast on BBC2 on 22 December 1996. 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, was sexually abused as a child by the Chairman of the Line, Arthur Grandridge, who is her godfather. Assisted by Selina, Ruben plots to murder Grandridge on the Brighton Express.