Faking his own life

"Succession" star does a Reginald Perrin in true scandal drama.

- RUSSELL BROWN

STONEHOUSE BBC UKTV, from Monday, September 18, 8.35pm; Sky Go

The perfectly normal response to Stonehouse is to reach for one's phone, tap in a few characters and ask: did this really happen? The answer is, yes, it very largely did - and even the parts "imagined" for dramatic purposes aren't that far off.

The three-part comic drama, made for ITV, is the story of John Stonehouse, the British Labour MP and one-time cabinet minister who provoked a media sensation in 1974 by faking his own death on a beach in Florida, leaving behind a wife and three children. False passports obtained with identities stolen from two dead constituents - Stonehouse visited their widows and extracted information under the pretence of offering sympathy - got him to Australia. There, it all fell apart. He was rumbled when a suspicious bank teller alerted police after he withdrew more than $20,000 in cash then promptly deposited it at a nearby branch of the Bank of New Zealand. The cops arrested him in the mistaken belief that he was the missing Lord Lucan.