The 'canoe man' scandal of two decades ago is now firmly in the public arena once again thanks to drama The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe, which has become a huge talk point amongst scores of viewers.
The four part ITV series, which kicked off on Easter Sunday, is dominating the channel's prime time schedule this week, airing over consecutive nights at 9pm and has sent social media on fire, over the real life events it's based on and the accents adopted by its cast, led by Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan as John Darwin and wife Anne. After finding themselves in crippling debt, with John on the verge of bankruptcy, the couple embarked on a 'fake death,' scam, where John staged his own 'disappearance,' having gone out to sea close their home in Seaton Carew in a kayak.
As a large scale search mission was launched to find him, John camped out in the wild, before going through with his ludicrous suggestion of hiding out in a bedsit right nest door to his and Anne's home. After lying low for a few years, John headed to Panama, with Anne later joining him as the couple searched for property. It was claimed that the huge spanner in their works of their escape to Panama was the fact that to be a citizen they needed their identities verified from their local police force back home. And, with Cleveland Police believing John was dead and him using the fake alias 'John Jones,' that was a complete no-go. However, in an interview after his release from prison, John said it was always his intention to return home.
