Darkest days

Narges Rashidi and Joseph Fiennes star in a real-life drama about a British family ripped apart

- SEAN MARLAND

Prisoner 951 Sunday & Monday, 9pm, BBC1 (box set, BBC iPlayer)

When Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by Iran's Revolutionary Guard at Tehran's International Airport on 3 April 2016, she had no idea it was the first day of a living nightmare that would last nearly six years.

The British-Iranian citizen was about to return home to the UK following a holiday, after taking her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella to meet her family in Iran.

At first, she was told she would be released the next morning, but as days turned into weeks, she was put on trial and sentenced to prisor on trumped-up charges of plotting to topple the Iranian regime.

The tale of Zaghari-Ratcliffe's ordeal, and the tireless struggle of her husband Richard to bring her home, is told in Prisoner 951, a four-part BBC1 drama starring Narges Rashidi and Joseph Fiennes 'In a normal drama, you might have two or three scenes that are very emotional,' explains Gangs of London star Rashidi, 45, who plays Zaghari-Ratcliffe.