Litvinenko review: Meticulous retelling of the audacious assassination – but lacking a sense of Alexander-Keith Watson-Entertainment – Metro

David Tennant as Alexander Litvinenko (Picture: ITV)

Any drama charting the poisoning of Russian spy turned dissident Alexander ‘Sasha’ Litvinenko was never going to be anything less than gruelling.

But even that expectation scarcely prepares you for the downbeat intensity of ITVX’s four-part drama, which exhaustively follows the marathon campaign for justice following Litvinenko’s death in 2006.

You can almost feel the weight of responsibility pressing down on a production that plays out, almost too authentically at times, like a documentary record of the facts.

It apparently took ‘200 people and 40,000 man hours’ to gather evidence against the men suspected of poisoning Litvinenko. You can almost believe the same amount of attention went into the meticulous recreation of the investigation.

But being meticulous doesn’t necessarily translate into compelling viewing. What Litvinenko crucially lacks is a sense of the man before the poisoning.

David Tennant gives a Russian accent his best crack as the doomed dissident, but he’s mainly confined to scenes of deathbed anger as, his light fading, he desperately battles to get his story told.

David as Alexander and Margarita Levieva as his widow Marina (Picture: ITV)

Mark Bonnar as DS Clive Timmons (Picture: ITV)

What gives the piece its real heart is the slow-burning, platonic relationship that develops between Litvinenko’s campaigning widow Marina (impressively played by Margarita Levieva) and dedicated cop DI Brent Hyatt (Neil Maskell).

It’s through them that you feel the real human impact of a family caught up in a deadly espionage battle.

There’s no doubt that Litvinenko is telling an important and disturbing story and notably it never fights shy of pointing the finger – repeatedly – at Vladimir Putin’s alleged role in the deadly affair – and also at a British officialdom wary of escalating a conflict with Russia, a major reason why it took so long to mount an inquiry into Litvinenko’s death.

For that it deserves much credit but you can’t help feeling a documentary would have served the purpose just as well.

All four episodes available from today on ITVX

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