Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Ruth Wilson, Iain Glen, Otto Farrant, Fiona Shaw, Calam Lynch, Keeley Hawes, Anupam Kher, Joy Richardson, Ian McElhinney, Patrick Kennedy, Elizabeth Rider, Dave Hill, Wilf Scolding, Barbara Marten, Joseph Mydell, Alex Blake, Gemma McElhinney.

It is an inescapable certainty that truth is far more stranger than fiction could ever hope to be, the stories we weave in existence, through the lies we tell ourselves to make our lives more bearable, to the possible deceit in which we hold others captive by, truth is the reality in which we all find our hidden depths in which to practice either to deceive, or to thrill with our stories.

It is in our imagination that worlds are created, but in which also worlds can crumble, lives shattered and ones that can almost never be resolved or put right. Almost never, but like any good story there is often a happy conclusion, or at least satisfying and for the offspring and descendants of the writer, spy and First World War Soldier Alexander Wilson, it is a conclusion that sees them embrace each other as a family, but one that still requires answers, one that is as incredible as anything he could have conceived on paper.

There will be those who see such a man as being nothing more than a despicable soul, fathering children to four women, marrying each one in turn whilst never letting go of the others, and whilst it is impossible to condone such behaviour, especially in our modern world and with the benefit of time, it should always be remembered that some lives are not fixed by our own morality, by decency, or by the laws which govern us; an epitaph on his grave reads, “He loved not wisely, but too well”, Othello in all but final deed, his only murdered victim being his reputation and the hearts of the women he broke.

To be subject to a three-part drama would perhaps have brought a smile to the lips of the man, his life examined, the puzzle put together by his third wife Alison and now shared with the nation, such a man will always have his faults, have scorn and hate poured upon him, but consider for a moment that it was never done out of the sense of evil, there was nothing to be gained by this, except love, no money was extorted, pain delivered yes, but who has not inflicted pain upon someone and for far less a deed.

Playing her own grandmother Alison Wilson, Ruth Wilson is in sensational form, harnessing the energy of the family but also that of presenting a truth to the country; in what must have been a constant reveal, to show such an extraordinary magnitude of events as a mystery worth solving would have put untold pressure on the actor, and yet, and alongside Iain Glen as the errant writer and Keeley Hawes as his second wife Dorothy Wick, this was a powerful drama which would have been dismissed as unrealistic had it not been completely true.

We cannot judge people by the secrets of the hearts they keep, we can hold them in some type of dismissive nature and insist we would never do the same, and yet our own hearts are just as complicated, a truth that Mrs Wilson shows with decency and clarity.

Ian D. Hall