After weeks of build up, The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe has definitely lived up to its hype, proving to be unmissable drama since its debut o9n Easter Sunday.
Following on from much talked about Sheridan Smith series No Return, emotional Hillsborough drama Anne and the latest series of The Bay, ITV have placed their hopes of a ratings winner on a dramatization of the shocking real-life story of 'canoe man ' John Darwin and his 'fake death' scam, that saw him and wife Anne lie to the police, authorities and their own sons in a bid to get money after finding themselves in crippling amounts of debt. As viewers have seen so far this week, the scam started when John paddled out to sea in a kayak, close to the couple's home in Seaton Carew.
He then made it look like he'd disappeared when, in reality, he camped out in the wild for a few weeks, as Anne reported him missing and a large scale search operation was launched. Eventually the search was called off and, at an inquest, a coroner ruled that John was missing presumed dead. John being ruled as dead helped Anne claim over £250,000 in pensions, insurance and benefits, while her husband was still very much alive and living in a bedsit right next door to the family home.
READ MORE: What happened to 'canoe man' John Darwin after prison stretch
After faking his identity and obtaining a passport, John travelled to Panama, where Anne would later join him. And it was while over there that the scheming couple did something that proved to be their undoing. Whilst searching for somewhere to live, John and Anne posed for a picture in a property office, a moment replicated in episode two of The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe on Monday night.
ITV viewers heard Monica Dolan, in the role of Anne, saying posing for the picture was the 'most stupid,' thing they did other than embark on the scam in the first place. At the end of the second episode, John, played by Eddie Marsan, told Anne that he was planning on returning to the UK and claim he had amnesia. And that's exactly what happened in 2007, when he walked into a London police station and said he thought the was missing person and didn't know where he'd been for the last five years.
John's appearance prompted a police investigation, with detectives already launching an investigation into Anne, who was taking foreign holidays and transferring large sums abroad. Their lie was finally exposed by a simple Google search of the words 'John,' 'Anne,' and 'Panama.' The photo, which saw John and Anne pose alongside Mario Vilar, head of the property firm Move To Panama, was then printed on the front page of The Mirror with the headline 'Canoe's This in Panama?'
When confronted by the picture, Anne said: "Yes, that's him. My sons will never forgive me." In 2008, John Darwin was jailed for six years and three months after admitting eight deception charges, wife Anne was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail for fraud and money-laundering.
