THE SHAMED AND THE SHAMELESS (THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND THE CANOE)

On March 21 2002, Hartlepool man John Darwin was seen taking a kayak out to sea in the English seaside resort of Seaton Carew.

Later that day, the 51 year old was reported missing, prompting a rescue operation.

The authorities found his kayak.

However, they were unable to recover a body.

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His disappearance puzzled investigators because the conditions at sea were calm on the day he vanished.

Nevertheless a death certificate was eventually issued by a coroner after an inquest, allowing his wife Anne to receive £250,000 in life insurance.

John Darwin, of course, hadn't died.

Instead he laid low for several years in the bedsit next door to the family home which he had purchased.

There was even a secret doorway constructed in the family home.

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The insurance money was used to gamble on the purchase of property abroad, with John eventually surfacing under a new identity to explore opportunities in Cyprus, Spain and the US and eventually Panama.

Adopting the pseudonym John Williams, Darwin travelled on a false passport but there were also reports of sightings in the UK.

Eventually as the gamble backfired and the money ran out, Darwin walked into a police station in London as himself, claiming to have suffered from amnesia.

However the police had prior to his appearance in London already begun to suspect fraud.

And when the Daily Mirror uncovered a photo of him and Anne in Panama when he was supposedly dead and she was officially grieving, the game was up.

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The Darwins' extraordinary deception is the kind of tehe story you'd expect to pop up as a drama on ITV's primetime schedules.

In recent years, the broadcaster has specialised in making true crime miniseries with accomplished actors - often about grisly murders.

While it is refreshing that 'The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe' is not about murder, it is exactly in the vein of an ITV crime drama, with Monica Dolan and Eddie Marsan playing Anne and John Darwin.

Written by Chris Lang, the executive producer of one of ITV's biggest hits 'Unforgotten,' it is directed by Richard Laxton and unfolds over four episodes.

The miniseries begins in dramatic fashion as the story about John's reappearance in London breaks in the media, with Anne crouched in the back of a taxi with a Daily Mirror journalist.

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The story is told by Lang from the perspective of Anne who received a heavier jail sentence for her part in the fraud.

Monica Dolan is magnificent in the role, portraying Anne Darwin as an easily manipulated wife who bears the heavier burden for her conman husband's misdeeds.

While John lays low, Anne is the one who has to lie to the police, to the insurers, under oath at an inquest and to her sons, Mark Stanley's Mark and Dominic Applewhite's Anthony.

But while the audience's sympathy is undoubtedly with her, Land and Dolan ensure that she doesn't escape too lightly - particularly by ramming home the hurt inflicted on her sons who believed their father was dead and found they were also suspects.

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Marsan is as wonderful as evet as John Darwin - depicting him as an arrogant, selfish and shifty individual who is just a little too convinced, like all conmen, that he is much more intelligent than everyone else.

In the police interrogation scenes, Marsan crackles with the arrogance of a fraudster - believing he has a real gift of the gab.

Stanley and Applewhite are sympathetic as the couple's sons whose initial relief at the reappearance of their father disintegrates when they suddenly realise the scale of their parents' deception.

David Fynn is effective too as the dogged journalist David Leighton who uncovered the truth about the Darwins and tracked Anne down in Panama.

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Ricky Gervais' sidekick Karl Pilkington, Andrew Lancel and Deka Walmsley are good value as well as the police interrogators - Detective Constable Phil Bayley, Detective Superintendent Paul Sampson and Detective Superintendent Tony Hutchinson.

Laxton directs Lang's screenplay in a charmingly unfussy way.

But ultimately it is Dolan and Marsan who dominate proceedings in a miniseries that doesn't just chronicle a spectacular tale of wrongdoing but also dwells on its consequences.

Of the two, Dolan just shades it as the most outstanding performance.

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But this isn't a competition and both actors bounce brilliantly off each other.

Lang's solidly written drama draws out the importance of people coming to terms with their past transgressions and securing forgiveness.

However only one of them manages to do that in the end and is humble enough. 

If 'The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe' teaches us one thing, it is that it really is true that leopards just can't change their spots.

('The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe' was broadcast on ITV between April 17-20, 2022)