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without hesitation prisoner 951dramatization of the story of Don’t know Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Kidnapped and held hostage by the Iranians for six years on charges of espionageThere is a sequence of serious comedy.
It’s 2017 and we see Nazanin (Nerges Rashidi), already imprisoned for over a year, in a special prison for female political prisoners, considerably easier conditions than some of the other brutal places where she was kept in solitary confinement. Suddenly there was an uproar around the television. “They’re talking about me,” Nazanin notices. She goes there to broadcast a clip of Iranian state TV boris johnsonThe then British Foreign Secretary, giving evidence to a Commons committee. You may remember his stupid, mistaken comments: “When we look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was just teaching people journalism, as I understand it, at the very limit.”
Nazanin, having already endured a year of mental torture by the notorious Revolutionary Guard, as the world has seen, sadistic and misogynistic secret police, suddenly freezes in a moment of unspoken, inexplicable despair as the camera stops and time slows down; Rashidi has brilliantly conveyed Nazneen’s silent trauma. After so much deception and manipulation at the hands of the Iranians, she now witnesses her ultimate betrayal as a British citizen.
Nazneen had always said that, no matter the compulsion, she had taken her two-year-old daughter to meet the little girl’s grandparents. His work as a project manager at the Thomson Reuters Foundation – the charity, not the news wire – was unrelated to his trip. The Iranians either did not understand this difference, or chose not to do so in order to gain a valuable hostage, a bargaining chip. Now, in one incomplete sentence, Johnson was effectively calling him a liar and a spy. It’s a terrible thing to contemplate, even though we have to do it. (Mercifully, Johnson has been left unclothed. He’s such a clown that he doesn’t need an actor to set things up.)
The humor comes a little later. Shortly after Johnson’s folly – and partly to try to make amends – he flies to Tehran for talks with the Ayatollah and his allies. Again, we see footage of women in prison shaking hands with their tormentors, but that’s why they can’t believe what they’re seeing: “Nazneen, how can this guy be important? He looks like he fell out of a bush.”
It’s a rare moment of relief for both Nazneen and the audience. If prisoner 951 If anything it’s a Solzhenitsyn-esque study in resilience, not only on her part, but also that of her husband Richard Ratcliffe (an intense and poignant performance by Joseph Fiennes), her daughter Gabriella (charmingly played by Mena Sayyah in her youth and later by Ava Rose) and their families (Nicholas Farrell supplies a believably upper middle-class father-in-law).
The painful passage of time is brilliantly captured, and you lose count of how many times Nazneen is tormented by broken hopes. Promises of Gabriela’s early release and return to Britain have been broken. Appeals are lost in fake “courts”. Richard and Nazanin both go on hunger strikes, and there is never much of a gap between scenes where one or both of them sink into full-blown suicidal despair – but their bond is unbreakable, and is featured in several flashbacks to their early romance and marriage.
All the while, Nazanin is plagued by attempts by Iranian authorities to pressure her into giving false confessions – efforts that ultimately lead to her giving in. This ultimately leads to Nazanin’s acquittal, set against the broader backdrop of the British government eventually repaying a £400m debt to Iran.
The Revolutionary Guards, whether old rude martinets in cheap suits, young men in sunglasses and leather jackets, or their staunch female companions in traditional chador, turn long stretches of the saga into terrifying mini-thrillers. Until BBC As the series ends, you have to conclude that paranoia is contagious and is the one thing that holds contemporary Iran together.
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With women like human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nargess Mohammadi, who was one of Nazanin’s fellow prisoners, and the defiant stubbornness of young people, we know that the regime in Tehran cannot last forever. Just as Nazneen’s troubles eventually went away, so will the troubles of the country she still loves.
‘Prisoner 951’ is available in full on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Sunday 23 November, and will air on BBC One from 9pm that night.