A man facing financial ruin fakes his disappearance while kayaking in the North Sea. His wife mourns with their two sons, has her husband declared dead and collects the insurance payoff, then he moves secretly into a hidden bedroom in their house. Later, the couple flee to Panama, where the scam unravels after an unwise photograph. The boys are summoned to meet their dead dad in a London police station.
Screenwriter Chris Lang, who wrote ITV detective show Unforgotten, is known for creating twisty, psychologically complex plots, but the real-life story of John and Anne Darwin – which he has turned into his new ITV drama The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe – is beyond even his imagination. Such was media coverage of the story when the pair were tried and jailed in 2008 that Lang could have considered naming it Unforgettable. But more than a decade later, the exact details aren’t quite as easy to remember.
