Errors so far after ten minutes of watching...

Accent completely wrong.
The house is on the headland sea front and not Seaton.
He paddles out from the block sands beach rather than Seaton beach.

The wife recorded it, but you can guarantee they’d get the accents completely wrong….did they mention Seaton or Hartlepool or was it given that comfy media duvet of being in the North East.
They made a film of this a few years back with Bernard Hill playing Darwin and filmed it in f#*+@#%g Southwold, never mentioned Hartlepool or Seaton. A bit like filming the monkey legend at Brighton and hanging the monkey because it wasn’t Woke enough.

It’s a drama, house doesn’t need to be actually in Seaton and the beach doesn’t really matter.

Plenty of shots of Seaton and it is set in “Seaton Carew”.

Accent is dreadful admittedly, it’s a poor Northumberland accent, she sounds like Vera.

Where i live we regularly get bronte dramas and factual stuff shoved down our throats. At least they get the outside scenes correct and not go to the other side of the moors to do it. As for the accents, i doubt it will worry anyone outside the north east as they,ll expect every woman to sound like vera anyway. Something i had to suffer in years of refereeing by being called the big geordie bastard on and off the pitch. Got to the point in the end of just ignoring it as it was more boring just to pull em up.

Come on man, we’re looking at it from a Hartlepool perspective.
By the way it’s not really a drama because they’re hopefully portraying actual events. I must admit I found the whole thing boring the first time around.
Wife just informed me the busy road outside could pose problems as it would have to be closed for filming and as it is a designated emergency route for the power station, this would not be permitted.

To be fair, the wife's accent is miles better than Vera's. It is clearly not a Hartlepool accent but at least it is consistent. Vera's "accent" is a fookin disgrace.

Some scene were by Middlesbrough railway station.....I think!

Apparently they are from Blackhall so............?

Where did Vera get her accent from, central casting, because it’s as unlikely and improbable as the role she ‘plays’.

I caught the original last night with "Yosser Hughes" playing Darwin on BBC iplayer and then this morning had email from ITV Hub about the same but obviously a slightly different take on the saga. I found both interesting but surprised Darwin owned 11 properties, albeit mortgaged up to the hilt. He looks as he is doing well now, living in the Philippines with a rather youngish wife.

I was thinking about that. If he had all that property albeit mortgaged why not sell it to pay his 64K debt instead of that stupid ruse? I think the guy was a fuckwit and so was his wife for going along with it although the programme is very sympathetic towards her.

According to The Daily Mail and the Christopher Stevens WEEKEND TV column: "Darwin staged his own disappearance, paddling his kayak into the sea off Harrogate in Yorkshire and leaving his wife Anne to report him missing." F*****G H**L. That's a bloody long kayak paddle to come ashore just past Steeley's crumbling pier and by the look of that sea running it would have turfed him out before he got to the shore.

If its in the Daily Mail it must be true

Harrogate on Sea…must be a hell of a tidal range there then.

I just cant believe people did not recognise him even with a disguise. Seaton is a small insular place and he must have been spotted.

I've watched the first two episodes and I am enjoying it. The programme makers state that people and places have been changed for the sake of dramatisation which is fairly normal procedure. As for the accents they are supposed to be Blackhall.
The whole thing is incredulous and epitomises the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction.

What? I’m down there twice a day and talk about a ‘Nowt to do with me, avoid eye contact, village of the damned attitude’…now the Headland , yes, even the gulls want know what’s going on.

I went down to Seaton yesterday having not shaved for 5 days whilst wearing some scruffy clothes and all the people i know recognised me
Got shit on my shoulder by a gull too!

There is a well known situation that has been used since time immemorial and that is "hidden in plain sight" This case was a perfect example of this. Despite people saying all the points on recognition or lack of it, apparently only one person is reported to have claimed recognising him. No matter how extraordinary it all sounds.

know myself though that when we go up to a nearby village and take the dogs for a walk with scruffy old clothes on and without a shave people who we do know from the events we go to there never recognise us until we speak to them. then there is the other thing that must have happened to most of us. someone walking towards you who you think you have seen on the tele but you do not say anything. could be a look alike or that person themselves.

Watched the remainder of the episodes last night and overall enjoyed it. The big mistake that they made was allowing their photograph to be taken. Anne Darwin should have ignored her solicitor and pleaded guilty as she ended up with a larger sentence than her husband who pleaded guilty. He came across as a Walter Mitty type fantasist but if the Panama authorities hadn't changed the rules on entry and that photo hadn't been taken, there was a very good chance that they would have got away with it. However, at a later date, someone on holiday might have recognised them. There is always something that turns up to "spoil" the party.

Hope this is publicity that will increase the tourist trade to the town.
The visit of Dominic Cummings has proven to be a real boost for Barnard Castle.
Perhaps we need to hang another monkey to keep the story on the front page.

Talking of tourism, saw a fascinating documentary on the boom in diving on wrecks, where in the States, Canada and Australia, they’re stripping decommissioned warships rather than scrapping them and then sinking them as diving reefs which also attract sea creatures to inhabit them. The result is a boom in local businesses catering for the visitors who come to dive the wrecks…… providing plenty of opportunities for jobs and new businesses……we’re perfectly placed for it, but….. someone will beat us to it as usual when word gets out.

[quote="Bluestreak"]Hope this is publicity that will increase the tourist trade to the town.

Careful what you wish for. You,ll have to pay the same prices as the tourists have to when they increase everything with a big influx of tourists into the town. two quid a hour parking anywhere at seaton or the headland with the chippies charging a tenner plus for a small fish and counting the chips on.

It was a classic ‘Ealing Comedy’ script. The miscreant’s plan always comes off and they get away, only to be caught later by a freak occurrence….. they never profit from their crime.

Indeed and more often than not it is because they get complacent and careless.
Maybe in reality humans generally get careless and make mistakes, making the perfect crime so much more elusive.
I have been thinking of where I could go to live, out of sight as it were, without detection, and still have a reasonably decent existence.
I'm still working on it.

Yes i take your point but the Headland is hardly promoted with little facilities.

get a season ticket for harrogate. on a serious note i,d try somewhere like anywhere on the norfork coast between hemsby and cromer where you,d be hard pushed to find anybody with a local accent where everyone is really tight lipped about their past. there was in fact someone from my grammar school who was a couple of years older than me who would turn the other way if he saw me out.

Anywhere south of Cromer is awful. Everyone looks like retired East End ‘Barrow boys’ in a crumbling cottage aka Walford on Sea. Anyway it’s falling into the sea.

Does anyone know what happened in the 1970s (ish?) to an accountant called Kilvington (practice was in Scarborough Street) who went missing?

Just watched the documentary far better than the four part drama.

so its obvious you have been there. somewhere where coast errosion may seem a blessing. even the holiday makers are a breed of their own, scruffy, fat, trying to rip you off with a tight west ham shirt on. the gypsies used to come at easter time and you could spot em a mile off. they were the clean well dressed ones with a sense of humour.

Having watched all the episodes I have to say that it's a good, well acted drama. That's taking it as it is without getting all anal about Hartlepool details.

Driven up there a few times and you feel like bathing in Jeye’s Fluid by the time you hit Cromer, then it’s a nice drive along the North Norfolk coast, especially the Village of Stiffkey which makes me chuckle with the story of the Vicar of Stiffkey who was accused of immorality and defrocked in the early 1930’s for ‘helping’ fallen women.

Would he, by any chance, have been related to Michael Kilvington the dodgy solicitor?

good old skiffkey. one of what seemed like every single village had a football team in the north norfolk saturday league that i had the pleasure to ref in the first couple of seasons i was down there. seemed to be a derby game every week and they all hated any other village around them. god help a team from nearer to norwich who came to these places who dared play a lad who was a bit darker skinned than them and only had 5 fingers per hand.

Don't know its just I worked there a short time and his disappearence has always interested me as a friend had to wait 7 years until he was declared dead that he got some inherited monies.

Snowy.Tin-Tin and Captain Haddock's Tours .. what a way to boost your pension snowy? it's all about enterprise ,and i know you're the top man.

Having visited all 3 places. i have to say a nice Latte on sleepy Bexhill sea front takes some beating..

It’s the future, the dive boat is being readied…

We are the crew on Snowy’s boat,
aboard the good ship Venus.
The figurehead is a woman in bed,
and the mast was the captains …. pride and joy.