Hardly Starsky & Hutch!
WELL, what a twit. Excuse the foul language, but how else are we meant to describe John Darwin, the real-life fraudster whose story has been dramatised over the past four nights in ITV’s The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe?
And his wife Anne? She didn’t exactly cover herself in glory either, did she? Even if she did insist John had left her no choice but to play along with this desperate, crackpot plan of his – to fake his own death (back in 2002) by staging what would look like a kayaking accident, allowing Anne to then claim on his life insurance – surely she could have nipped it in the bud?
Couldn’t she simply have told their sons what their fathead of a father was proposing?
Funnily enough, that’s one of the questions posed tonight, if not in those exact words, in the follow-up documentary THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND THE CANOE: THE REAL STORY (ITV, 9pm).
Another is: “How come the police fell for it? Were they just plain dozy or what?” (again, I paraphrase). Fifteen years on from when the Darwins were finally apprehended, various people who had an interest in, or a connection to, this bizarre case – police officers, reporters, former colleagues, an insurance chappy etc. – reflect on just how mad it all became.
My favourite contributor is detective Tony “Hutch” Hutchinson, not necessarily for the policing skills he brought to the case but for his fine turn of phrase – referring to the wardrobe via which Darwin accessed his hiding place, for example, as “his own private Narnia”.
And to his later claim to be suffering from amnesia as “one for the unicorns and fairies”.
As for the suggestion that he and his team missed some pretty blinding clues, Hutch argues that “hindsight can often be a stick to beat people with”.
He also points out that having a hunch that something’s not right (the insurance chappy insists he had a huge one from the start) isn’t the same as having actual evidence. Hutch is a big fan of evidence. Hutch is no fan of the hunch.
Elsewhere tonight, Channel 4 is offering us yet another of those edgy comedies that it is so proud of, in this case one called CHIVALRY (10pm and 10.30pm), all about sexual politics in the movie industry in the post-#MeToo era.
Starring Steve Coogan and Sarah Solemani, it is one of those programmes which does indeed have me asking several very pertinent questions, such as, “Who on earth is this actually aimed at?” and “How have they managed to create a comedy in which every character, whatever their standpoint, is so thoroughly unlikeable?”
Enjoy.