THE Thief, His Wife and the Canoe tells a story of a man named John Darwin, who faked his own death to escape debt.
But is the new ITV series based on a true story? Find out here.
Is The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe a true story?
The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe is based on the true story events that took place early 2000s.
While most of the story is true, ITV has confirmed that some characters and events were created for entertainment purposes.
The mini-series was inspired by a memoir written by journalist David Leigh.
The four-part drama is written by Chris Lang, and will retell the story of John and Anne Darwin and their infamous insurance scandal.
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Who are John and Anne Darwin?
Warning: contains spoilers for what happens in the series.
John and Anne Darwin ran a business renting bedsits in the County of Durham, but ended up in hundreds of thousands of debt after buying two adjoining houses in Seaton Carew.
John came up with an idea to fake his own death in order to claim life insurance.
Anne reported him missing in 2002 after he went canoeing near their home, and he was later declared dead.
She continued to lie to their sons, Mark and Anthony for five years about their father.
Anne managed to claim £700,000 in pensions and insurance payouts, while John was living in a bedsit next door.
The pair decide to start a new life, by selling their properties and moving to an apartment in Panama City.
However, their secret was exposed when John turned up at a police station in London 2007 claiming to have suffered from anemia, while Anne pretended she thought he was dead.
The police found out he was lying after they discovered a now infamous photo of the couple smiling in a real estate office in Panama in July 2006.
Anne pleaded not guilty at her trial, but was found guilty and received a prison sentence of six years and six months.
John pleaded guilty and was ordered to serve six years and three months.
The pair went on to divorce, with Anne going on to write a book about her story called Out of My Depth, which was published in 2016.
John went on to marry a woman called Mercy May.
Who plays John and Anne Darwin in the ITV show?
The infamous John Darwin is played by War Horse actor, Eddie Marsan.
The 53-year-old English actor won the London Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Happy-Go-Lucky.
Speaking about the series, Marsan said: “It’s a great story about two ordinary people who get into extraordinary circumstances. I love stories like that.
“John tried to build a buy-to-let empire and retire early. He had delusions of grandeur. In a narcissistic way, he thought he was smarter than everyone else.”
He continued: “That’s why he had the cojones to try this. He thought he could outsmart everyone else. He saw other people as merely two-dimensional and thought he was the only three-dimensional person in the world. But he underestimated people’s ability to see through him.”
Playing Anne Darwin is Call the Midwife actress Monica Dolan.
Dolan won the Bafta TV Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult.
Speaking about the drama, she said: “It’s an astonishingly interesting relationship between John and Anne. It’s also a series of events that is incredibly bizarre, and yet if you follow what they were trying to do, every individual event makes sense.
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“The drama says something wider as well. No one is denying they were criminals, but at the same time banks were selling mortgages they shouldn’t have been selling to that couple.”
She finished by saying: “They were bound to get into trouble. It really is a fascinating story.”
