'The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe': Get a first look at the ITV drama based on the bizarre true story

A first-look trailer for The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe shows Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan recreating the infamous photo that proved the downfall of John and Anne Darwin.

The ITV drama series, which begins on Easter Sunday, retells the bizarre true crime story of the Darwins from Anne's point of view, played by Dolan.

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In 2002, John Darwin hatched a plan to go missing while canoeing off the Hartlepool coast and to fake his own death with the help of his wife, in order to cash in life insurance policies and avoid bakruptcy.

John had bought a number of extravagant properties but was unable to keep up with the mortgage payments and planned to hide out in the house next door to his "grieving" wife, eventually returning and claiming memory loss.

But when a photo of the couple emerged from a Panama property website showing that they had travelled there together to invest during the period that John was supposedly presumed dead, it caused outrage - not least, from their two adult sons who had been lead to believe their father was gone.

The drama series trailer shows a smiling Marsan and Dolan in a mock-up of the Panama photo which lead to their trial and imprisonment for six years.

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Dolan said: "It’s a series of events that is incredibly bizarre, and yet if you follow what they were trying to do, every individual event makes sense.

"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."

Marsan added: "I think people may come away with a bit of empathy for Anne, but less so for John. Especially during lockdown, lots of us have faced financial difficulty in circumstances we can’t control. What this story does is take that to an extreme. Lots of us face financial difficulties, but we don’t come up with such extraordinary solutions."

Dolan also gave a teaser of how the story would be told as she said: "How true will Anne's narration be? How much of what she is saying is genuine? It’s always very interesting to play a character who is untruthful.

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

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