Canoe Man (2010)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Short Television Film

Writer/Director: Norman Hull

Cinematographer: Don Freeman

Composer: Neil Barclay

Cast: Bernard Hill, Saskia Reeves, Jeremy Swift, Philip Correia, Jeremy Legat, Kate Ambler, Pepe Balderrama, Philip McGough

Hull’s competent if rather uninspired BBC production just about captures the incredulity of the real life incident that it dramatises – John Darwin, with the aid of his wife Anne, unbeknownst to their two adult sons, faked his own death in 2002 in order to get the insurance money, and lived under a new identity for five years, before being uncovered – but it is not nearly as entertaining or incisive as it should have been. Iain.Stott