In April 2016, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe arrived at Tehran airport after spending New Year with her family.
She was supposed to get on a plane back to London. Instead, she was intercepted, along with her 22-month old daughter Gabriella, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. She didn’t know it then, but it would be the start of a nightmare ordeal – one that only ended in 2022.
This is where we start Prisoner 951, the BBC’s new dramatisation of her story. For six years, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was one of the UK’s most recognisable faces: an innocent woman, locked up by the Iranian regime on falsified charges.
Her fight to get back to her family – and her husband Richard’s fight to get her released – are what form the backbone of this “love story” from creator Stephen Butchard.
It’s a dark love story though. After her arrest, a terrified Nazanin (Narges Rashidi) finds herself being bounced between solitary confinement and brutal interrogation sessions from the Iranian secret forces.
“Will somebody tell me why I am here?” she cries at one point. We soon find out: she is being charged with spying for the British state. Her life is now controlled by smug men with guns and stiff-faced women in black chadors – arguably worse than the men, in the way they uphold the systematic state-backed misogyny that ultimately led to widespread protects in 2022.
The legal system, we find out, isn’t fair; instead, it’s hopelessly rigged against Nazanin. “I will pray for you,” her judge tells her patronisingly at one point; the next, he’s sentencing her to years in the notorious Evin Prison, away from her toddler.
On the other side of the world, an incredulous Richard (Joseph Fiennes) is having to contend with dubious foreign office advice, which basically consists of “doing nothing” and not drawing attention to the issue. When he does just that by going to the press, the Government is even less help. The third episode features actual footage of Boris Johnson, whose easy-breezy declaration that Nazanin was “teaching journalism” in Iran landed her in deeper trouble with its authorities; it’s utterly rage inducing.
That the drama works as well as it does is down to the tremendous central performances from Fiennes and Rashidi – who manage to have impressive chemistry given that they hardly film any scenes together.
Fiennes does furious and stoic very well, but the lion’s share of the acting credits should go to Rashidi, who spends most of the series either weeping, screaming or totally numb – she’s never anything less than utterly believable, and her constant fear is infectious.
The only time we see Nazanin smiling is in the obligatory flashback sequences, which are shot in a kind of sepia-tinged haze and accompanied by some schmaltzy guitar music. They’re shown to us pretty much every episode: it’s a reminder of what the couple are fighting for, and a welcome counterpart to the relentless misery, even if they are a bit sickly.
And the misery is relentless. Every episode seems to go through the same motions, like a nightmare played on repeat: Nazanin is offered some glimpse of freedom, only for it to be snatched away by another round of cheerless security officers.
In fact, it’s striking just how cruelly the Iranian government played with the hopes of Nazanin and her family. “They say it’s over, that I’m to be released,” she tells her mother on the phone, after ten weeks of imprisonment.
Her mother weeps with happiness – but soon enough, Nazanin is screaming at the security officers in Tehran airport as she’s forced into yet another van, rather than being reunited with her family.
If the drama is repetitive, then that is oddly to its benefit. It’s an apt way of illustrating just how trapped and helpless the entire family must have felt. The ending, when it comes, is less a moment of euphoria then a slow release of breath. Prisoner 951 might not be uplifting, but it’s a testament to two extraordinary people who never gave up fighting for each other – and that’s definitely worth celebrating too.
Streaming now on BBC One and iPlayer
