John Darwin: More pictures released from canoe man ITV drama

The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe is on ITV at 9pm from Easter Sunday to Wednesday 20th April.

The four-part series will tell the story of how Hartlepool man John Darwin, played by BIFA winner Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan, Sherlock Holmes, Happy Go Lucky) faked his own death to claim life insurance and avoid bankruptcy.

It was filmed in the region last year. 

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The drama focuses on how Anne Darwin, played by BAFTA-winner Monica Dolan (Appropriate Adult, W1A, A Very English Scandal), became complicit in her husband’s deception as she started to convince the world, their family and friends, the police and insurance companies, that he had gone missing in 2002 whilst canoeing off the coast of Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, where the couple owned two large houses with panoramic views of the sea.

In 2002, Darwin and his then wife Anne deceived insurers, police and even their two sons into believing the ex-prison officer had died in a North Sea accident in 2002.

The couple started a new life in Panama but the tale unravelled when John came back from the dead in 2007, claiming to have suffered amnesia.

Thought to have drowned in the sea off the Seaton Carew coast, Darwin walked into a London police station and told an officer: "I think I am a missing person".

The couple were jailed for the fraud and the extent of the parents’ deception shocked the world.

The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe was inspired by a memoir written by journalist David Leigh who was the first journalist to track down Anne as she was on the verge of setting up a new life in Panama.

Monica Dolan and Eddie Marsan are joined in the cast by Mark Stanley (White House Farm), Dominic Applewhite, and Karl Pilkington (Sick of It, Derek).

Screenwriter Chris Lang said he was drawn to the story after reading hundreds of pages of research in May 2020.

He said: Every time I turned a page of the research, there was another extraordinary revelation. I kept finding myself thinking, ‘I can’t believe they did that. And then that. And then that.’

“It was just a story that kept on giving and so saying ‘yes’ to it was a no-brainer.”

When asked what caught his imagination, he added: “The incongruity of this very ordinary couple from Hartlepool hatching this very extraordinary plan, which then came undone in an exotic Central American country.

“The juxtaposition of those two worlds was very rich territory. Their story was also very unusual in the sense that it was undeniably tragic, but also, on occasion, bleakly funny. As a screenwriter, that is very fertile ground.”

Read more: Canoe man John Darwin reportedly travelling to Ukraine war

Mr Marsan described the character of Darwin as a narcissist.

He said: “John tried to build a buy-to-let empire and retire early. He had delusions of grandeur. In a narcissistic way, he thought he was smarter than everyone else. That’s why he had the cohones to try this. He thought he could outsmart everyone else.

“He saw other people as merely two-dimensional and thought he was the only three-dimensional person in the world. But he underestimated people’s ability to see through him.”

He added: “John’s a fantasist, but his story captures the zeitgeist. I always play characters who are psychologically deluded, narcissistic or abusive. It used to be that they were on the periphery of stories. Society was the norm, and they were outside it.

“But recently I’ve been playing these characters and they are among us now. The idea of a middle-aged man suffering from self-delusion and narcissism is quite prominent.”

The drama is narrated by Darwin’s wife Anne.

Ms Dolan said: “It’s an astonishingly interesting relationship between John and Anne. It’s also a series of events that is incredibly bizarre, and yet if you follow what they were trying to do, every individual event makes sense. The drama says something wider as well. No one is denying they were criminals, but at the same time banks were selling mortgages they shouldn’t have been selling to that couple. They were bound to get into trouble. It really is a fascinating story.

“One of the things I found very, very clever is that Anne is narrating the story, so there’s this whole issue of her mendacity. How true will her narration be? How much of what she is saying is genuine? It’s always very interesting to play a character who is untruthful.

“There is so much to play with – how much is she lying and how much are other people projecting things onto her? Every scene has been illuminating about how people from all these different bodies – the police, the family liaison unit and her legal representatives - viewed her.

“There’s so much to be played in terms of ‘how good a liar is she?’ If you’re lying badly, it makes other people look stupid, and they can’t all have been stupid in this story. The audience know she’s lying, and there’s no mileage in making it too obvious.

“Also, I don’t think John could have achieved what he did without her, and yet she inspires sympathy in people. It’s a terrific tale about an unreliable narrator.”

The drama was commissioned for ITV by Head of Drama Polly Hill and produced in association with All3Media International.

Episode One

We meet John and Anne Darwin, a couple plagued by debt. Facing bankruptcy John decides to fake his own death using his canoe, much to the horror of his wife. They successfully pull it off and John goes into hiding while Anne consoles her sons.

Episode Two

John successfully applies for a passport to create a new identity, while forcing Anne to demand an inquest into his death so they can get the insurance pay out. Miraculously it works and the cheques arrive. They plan a new life together in Panama.

Episode Three

John has had enough of being dead and returns to England to declare he is suffering from amnesia. He is reunited with his sons. Journalists hunt down Anne in Panama and the story starts to unravel as a photograph of the two of them emerges.

Episode Four

Anne and John are interviewed by the police – the truth emerges. The case goes to trial where Anne pleads not guilty on the grounds of marital coercion. Their traumatised sons initially refuse contact but come to find forgiveness for their mother.

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