“Prisoner 951” is a “harrowing watch”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. The four-part series dramatises the nightmarish six years Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe endured as a political prisoner in Iranian custody before eventually being reunited with her husband and young daughter in the UK.
It is “perhaps as close as we’ll get” to imagining “how much she suffered, physically and mentally” – thanks largely to a “powerhouse performance” by Narges Rashidi as Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The story begins in Tehran where Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been visiting family. When she arrives at the airport to catch her flight back to the UK, she is stopped by officials. “Wrenched from her crying baby daughter”, Gabriella, she is taken away and “shoved in a filthy, dark prison cell in solitary confinement”, accused of spying for the British state.
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Meanwhile, her husband Richard Ratcliffe (Joseph Fiennes) is at home getting ready for his wife’s return and “putting her favourite ice cream in the freezer”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. As his wife despairs from her prison cell, we watch him gradually realise that “the Foreign Office is useless”, and start to mount his own passionate campaign for her release.
The first episode of the “illuminating” series is “gripping”. It’s followed by three slower instalments that provide crucial political context. Based on “A Yard of Sky” – the soon-to-be-published book by Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband – the drama makes it plain that this British-Iranian mother is a “political pawn”. Iran is putting pressure on Britain “to repay a £400m debt for military equipment, owed to Tehran since the 1970s”.
“Mercifully”, Boris Johnson is “left uncast”, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. The former prime minister’s blundering declaration that the imprisoned charity worker was “teaching journalism” – which landed Zaghari-Ratcliffe in even deeper trouble with Iranian authorities – is relayed by real-life news footage. Johnson is “buffoon enough without needing an actor to camp things up.”
The “excruciating passage of time” is vividly portrayed, and you “lose count of the number of times Nazanin is tormented by dashed hopes”. Appeals are lost, promises of imminent release are broken, husband and wife go on multiple hunger strikes “but their bond is unbreakable, and portrayed in the many flashbacks to their early romance and marriage”.
Fiennes and Rashidi have “impressive chemistry given that they hardly have any scenes together”, said Vicky Jessop in London’s The Standard. “The ending, when it comes, is less a moment of euphoria than 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.”
