Not coming to Russian State Television anytime soon, I'd imagine, this four-part ITV drama convincingly and realistically retold the events surrounding the 2006 death by poisonising in London of the recently naturalised British citizen, one-time KGB commander Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko.
Litvinenko had just written and published in the UK a tell-all book deeply embarrassing to his former paymasters about the heinous acts he was ordered to commit for the fatherland and clearly was seen as a danger to his former homeland, requiring his permanent removal from the scene. Lured into a meeting with two former visiting ex-colleagues at a London city centre hotel, he unwittingly drank tea laced with polonium, we're told the most dangerous substance on earth, a man-made toxin manufactured exclusively in Russia. After ingesting the radioactive material, he took ill almost immediately and died an agonisingly painful death, but not before giving an explosive interview to two investigating police officers in which he publicly named Russian President Putin as his murderer.
The programme then follows the dogged efforts of the British police, under the command of DSU Clive Timmons, to uncover the truth and do justice to Litvinenko and his surviving wife and son, no easy task of course, given the obfuscation and dirty tricks put up by their Russian conterparts as well as negotiating the delicate political ramifications of offending and then poking the Russian bear.
I found this to be a most compelling production, from the chillingly accurate recreation of the doomed Litvinenko on his death bed, to the very human connection made to his widow by the investigating officers and taking in the various rings and hoops Timmons and his team had to negotiate, mainly set by the Russians but also the only slightly less obstructive diplomatic restraints at home. Indeed, if I had a complaint at all about the depiction of events, it was that not enough scrutiny was cast on the timorous actions of the British government of the time in not more loudly calling out and taking stronger sanctions against the perpetrators of this outrage carried out on home soil, which of course wasn't the last time Russia attempted to carry out a State-ordered assassination in Britain as witness the later Salisbury poisonings where a British-born woman was actually killed by accidentally coming into contact with the poison brought into our country by assassins.
I watched this very well-made series with a mixture of anger and compassion, as I was no doubt meant to. The ensemble acting was excellent from top to bottom, especially David Tennant's fleeting but convincing portrayal of Litvinenko, Mark Bonnar as the taciturn but laser-focused Timmons, Neil Maskell as DI Brent Hyatt, the initially sceptical police officer first assigned to the case who resolves to see it through and Margarita Levieva who sympathetically plays Litvinenko's widow Marina, who keeps her dignity and fortitude at all times.
Dramatised just enough from the known real events to keep the action at all times credible and yet watchable, this gripping drama was a compulsive watch from beginning to end.
