A man facing financial ruin falsifies his disappearance while kayaking in the North Sea. His wife mourns their two sons, her husband is pronounced dead and collects the insurance payment, after which he secretly moves into a hidden bedroom in their house. The couple later fled to Panama, where the scam unraveled after an unreasonable photo. The boys were called to meet their dead father at a police station in London.
Screenwriter Chris Lang, who wrote the ITV detective show Unforgotten, is known for creating distorted, psychologically complex plots, but the real story of John and Anne Darwin – which he turned into his new ITV drama “The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe” – is beyond even his imagination. It was the media coverage of the story when the couple was tried and thrown in jail in 2008 that Lang might consider calling her memorable. But more than a decade later, the exact details are not so easy to remember.
“I was surprised at how much I forgot,” says Lang. As I read the research material, I kept thinking: oh, yes! But then there was a huge abundance of things I had no idea about: how they fulfilled the idea, why they decided to return. “
Lang has come up with a vivid farce about an unfortunate eccentric dreamer who seems to resonate with the public – judging by the reactions to the show’s promotional material. “When I tweeted the first picture on the poster, there were people who said, ‘They were just chasing insurance companies and fucking us for decades,'” Lang said. “But this was not the crime that led to the imprisonment; that was what they did to their children. “
The unpleasant way in which Anne Darwin pretended to her children that their father was dead was what drew Monica Dolan to play her. This is the latest in a series of criminal roles in ITV dramas, including the prolific serial killer Rose West in “Suitable Adult” and Maria Marchese, a London resident who has been jailed for her horrific harassment of an ex-boyfriend in U Be Dead. Dolan enjoys the challenge of parts that viewers don’t like, maybe even hate. “I don’t want to excuse myself for being a hero,” she said. “I just do what the character does in the script and I try never to resist.”
Although John’s idea was to settle his huge debts by demanding his death, Anne was the one to receive the longest sentence: three months longer than the six years and three months her husband received. Just as Medea, who killed her children, is better known in Greek tragedy than many male psychopaths, maternal cruelty seems to have been seen as more criminal than that of the father.
“Unfortunately, we’re used to men being horrible to children,” Lang said. “There is something more interesting in the fact that a woman and a mother commit this betrayal than a father.”
Looking at Lang’s version of events, viewers can conclude that Anne was the victim of forced control by her husband, who was shown to have a strong romantic and sexual power over her and made all the decisions for both. This was raised in her defense, but most importantly, the concept of coercion is less legally defined than it is now.
The living dead … The real John and Anne Darwin, filmed in Panama with a local real estate agent in 2006 Photo: Shutterstock
“When she was tried,” Dolan said, “the person accused of coercion had to be physically present during any alleged crime.” So years of psychological haircuts or emails from Panama didn’t count.
When the series aired in Hartlepool last April, Boris Johnson was in town supporting his by-election, which turned the Tortheast’s northeast seat for the first time in five decades, in part because London has been neglected and exploited by such politicians. from the capital’s bankers. Dolan believes that in this sense, Darwin can be seen as a victim: John, a man of humble origins, received loans to buy a dozen properties to buy for rent. When he devised his conspiracy, he owed £ 700,000.
“Not to belittle what they did,” Dolan said, “but the way banks just borrow money from people was inevitable.” The amount of their debt was staggering. “
Dolan emphasizes that she and Eddie Marsan play “characters written by Chris” as John. Neither Darwin’s parent nor their sons collaborated on the project, so it is based on research and a manuscript of a book by journalist David Lake.
“You have to imagine a lot of that,” Lang admits. “You research and research, then you make this little leap. This is an assumption, but this is a really educated assumption. You can’t say that this really happened or what goes through her mind. But how well do any of us know ourselves? If I could sit down and say, “Why did you do it?” I’m not sure she would be clearer than I am.
… With a paddle… Eddie Marsan in “The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe”. Photo: Helen Williams / ITV
But without permission or input from living originals, does the writer feel responsible for them? “Of course,” Lang replies. “There is a huge moral responsibility and we talked about it an awful lot. He owes money to the boys, but also to John and Ann. You can’t slander them, you can’t make things up. As for the children, I would be surprised if they didn’t think it was a nice depiction of what happened to them. We are entirely on their side that this is a heinous crime against them. “
But what if they just didn’t want to be dramatized in prime time and re-introduced in the media?
“The refutation of this is that the boys gave a huge interview to the Daily Mail. Anne wrote a book and did many interviews. Darwin has spoken to the press many times. So to be alone, the defense doesn’t last. “
The thief, his wife and canoe join the ITV quiz (for the alleged “coughing” scam to win “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”) And BBC One’s “Very English Scandal” (reopening a murder plot instigated by the then Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe) in an emerging subgenre of hilarious, comic real-life crime capers. Since no one was killed in any of these crimes – although a dog was killed in Thorpe’s story – dramatizations have more to entertain.
The show’s executive producer, David Nat, said: “We said from the beginning that we should not be afraid of humor in this. I’m beginning to wonder if we’re reaching a saturation point with a serious dark real crime. What emblematic stories of this kind remain to be told? Besides, with where we are in the world right now – first Covid and now Ukraine – I’m not sure if this is the most attractive prospect of watching something really terrifying. I think the sweet spot is the real story, which is also nice. ”
Panamanian Forgeries… Eddie Marsan as John Darwin and Monica Dolan as Anne Darwin in The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe. Photo: ITV / PA
Making true stories is also Dolan’s obsession. For Rose West, she searched a pile of NHS glasses to find the right pair. For Anne Darwin, the challenge was dental – finding false teeth to give Dolan narrower features with a fuller face. And while it helped that she grew up in nearby Middlesbrough, she also worked with a dialogue coach on Darwin’s native Seton Carew tones.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that if you make an accent, you have to learn it with artificial teeth! “You don’t want to do it one way and then brush your teeth and start over because dentures change the sound,” she said.
When filming was complete, Dolan put on a different pair of prostheses to play pioneering artist Audrey Amis in Carol Morley’s upcoming biopic, Typist Artist Pirate King, and then performed one of the best stage performances of the year as Sister Aloysius, a nun who suspects a priest of child abuse in the renaissance of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable. Although Aloysius is the kind of nasty character he loves to play, there was a key difference – which created problems.
“I knew something was wrong and I had to consciously force myself not to put my hand to my mouth,” she said. “Then I realized it was because for the first time in so long I only had my own teeth!”
More continuity is ahead for Lang, who moved on to the fifth series of Unforgotten, ITV’s brilliant police procedure, with Shined Keegan replacing Nicola Walker as Sanjay Bhaskar’s cold crime investigator. Both shows feature ordinary people doing something wrong that they seem to have missed until fate exposed them.
“That’s my main interest,” Lang said. “I think we are often on the verge of turning into extreme behavior all our lives, and sometimes we do. So it’s an attempt to figure that out – and the stress you have to put on the way you live your life. I suspect that some people who have committed crimes are more agile to live with this duality. But many people have been destroyed by it. That’s what I want to study. “
The thief, his wife and canoe have been on ITV and ITV Hub since April 17
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