Anyone watching The Thief, The Wife & The Canoe?

What I found revealing is how little joy they gained from the fraud: years locked away from any good times they might have had together, and just a few weeks in the sun before jail. Heavens, they could have filed for bankruptcy, started again, and, a while later, recovered, and booked a couple of weeks in Spain!

You can see and hear the pain in her voice

You see and hear an actor and a script.

Well, I feel very sorry for the poor woman.

She was bullied by a very manipulative man.
Unfortunately, she felt under his control. You can see and hear the pain in her voice.
It wasn’t her idea and she just got swept along with it. She clearly didn’t relish what they were doing.
She is the innocent one in all this although she was also complicit.

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I said to my husband while we were watching 'I'm sure that's Freddie 'Parrot Face' Davies playing his dad and indeed it is.

She played the part very well and her accent hardly faltered.

Perhaps because it is her own accent!

She played the part very well and her accent hardly faltered.
Unless you've been the victim of a controlling partner you cannot begin to understand how she could have been bullied into doing what she did.
I don't think she was very intelligent - I think she was unusably naïve, if she'd used her brain she'd have dobbed him but she was too afraid of breaking up her marriage and her own heart with it.
So in the end she did both.

Well said ‘Sparklfizz’…. I’ve watched the first two episodes and cannot believe police didn’t know the couples financial circumstances. Also peeeed off with the wife behaving so innocently….she could’ve stop the ball rolling in the first few days! She chose not to.

Monica Dolan is from Middlebrough, not far from Seaton Carew so probably didn't need voice coaching

Can't help thinking that the actress who plays Anne Darwin has had dialect coaching from comedian Sarah Millican! Close your eyes next time she speaks and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between them!

I think I felt more sorry for his dad than for the sons.

Grantanow

Can't be bothered to watch it.

This thread is about the programme ???

Can't be bothered to watch it.

HannahLoisLuke

No. I was annoyed enough when it was in the news. Don’t want to revisit the story.

I wasn't annoyed but I was that they got away with it for so long!

I m afraid having been through a very controlling relationship and worked with umpteen women who have been bashed both mentally and physically I don’t know one who would have been so cruel to their children as she was So I m sorry I don’t buy the poor little woman she was every bit as bad as he was and this is said by someone who has in the past been battered and bruise with not an ounce of self confidence however I would have walked barefoot over hot coals to protect my children and I would never have been so cruel

The two sons seemed to think the world of him so was he that awful to her surely as grown men they would have known if she was that badly treated She was obviously not kept from the wider family ( as a lot of controlled women are) as we saw them round the table

It amazes me how that silly couple thought they could get away with it all. She could of said no to his stupid scheme, but she didn't and then they put their kids through hell. Horrible couple.

No. I haven’t been watching it nor the BBC running of the same story. I read newspaper reports at the time and felt sorry for their sons and other family members. It’s not a story I feel any interest in.

They were some pair. I don't think she was the mealy mouthed wee innocent that was portrayed, she was obviously capable of lying through her teeth. Not only to the authorities but to her own sons. My understanding was the sons never forgave them and I don't blame them. How could you put your children through that?Mr Darwin was obviously deluded and thought he was God's gift. A weird, unlikeable pair, no sympathy for either of them. The drama is excellent and much as I like Eddie Marsan, Monica Dolan has stole the show.

No. I was annoyed enough when it was in the news. Don’t want to revisit the story.

According to the article about the drama in the Radio Times , John and Anne Darwin didn't cooperate with the series.

I can well believe she was coerced.
They TV version is sympathetic towards her but here she is in real life, with the estate agent in Panama. She doesn't look at all nervous or pressurised!

I'm afraid that I do havae sympathy for her, she first met him at 14, he was the only man she had been with at all, he had managed to separate her from her family and friends, or maybe just stopped her from making any friends, so she had more time to fulfil his every wish. He didn't give a sh1t about his father, when she said what about the family, he just said well the parents will die soon
I wholly agree that she shouldn't have done it but after 30 odd years in thrall to the man I can see how it was hard for her to stand up to him. And once in the situation, what better defence against killing her if she stood up to him than he couldn't have done it because he was dead
I did watch the programme with the true story, and couldn't believe how people had identified him and said they'd seen him and no one did anything about it, if the police had taken them seriously then yes she would have been in bother with the police but not in such bother, the extra bi of sentence for her was because it was a different charge, she was fraud, she was the one that fraudulently claimed
he was pretending to be dead or something [should have taken into account that the search for him and the police investigation would have cost ££££££.
As for those who say well she was smiling in those photos, well anyone who has been a victim of abuse knows that you have to smile because if you look miserable it reflects badly on you, and could cause further violence, my now ex used to ask people who he thought might have seen me around how I seemed, and would report back so and so saw you in the market yesterday and said you looked miserable, very dangerous to put yourself at risk
In The true story follow up, I did think that the living room was very odd-looking, nothing to personalise it, just sofas, didn't seem to be any photos or pictures or anything to make it look like most people's living rooms
He was a fantasist, entitled, buying expensive cars when they were on their uppers and presumably living on her income, presumably not letting her know about any of the finances. Obviously should have sold some of the properties and cleared the mortgages, sold the car, and got a sensible one, etc. MAybe sold the canoe. But he was too important for that sort of thing, didn't want to seem a failure
Interesting what the insurance man said about there had been other claims where it had been said someone had been lost off a boat, so he wasn't even original with his cunning plan

You couldn't make it up and the book was certainly an interesting read and if I remember correctly she didn't take any profit from it

I don't believe you are allowed to profit from crime.

Yes - watched all of it. Unbelievable they got away with it as long as they did. I can't believe it was portrayed almost as a comedy - it was a crime that shoved all our insurance premiums up. They should have been billed for the cost of the emergency services time they guzzled up.
I don't believe she was coerced at all. She went along with everything just to avoid the shame of bankruptcy. Simpler to sell the houses, Range Rover and move into a 1 bed flat. Telling your sons their father has died is outrageously cruel. She had endless opportunities to jump off the bandwagon she was on - across two continents and many years and she took none of them.

what I thought was unbelievable was when she told the police that she didn't have a photo of him - I mean doesn't everybody have at least a wedding photo or why didn't they find his passport with a photo in it? and of course they didn't look into their finances?! I don;t have much sympathy for her, she is an intelligent woman and said early on that what was planned was immoral as well as illegal. I read in an article that she said at that point in time she had fallen out of love with him, so I don;t believe the coercive control plea