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When the British-Iranian woman was detained in Iran in 2016, it wasn’t immediately obvious why she was held – however after 100 days, the outlines emerged. Her partner Richard Ratcliffe, held a press conference. He collected 780,000 supporters on a appeal for her release, and sent a message urging the same thing from ex- leader David Cameron. This, it transpired much later, came after secret discussions with the British diplomatic service in which government staff maintained that the best thing, to ensure Nazanin’s freedom and the security of her parents and brother in Iran, was to remain discreet and let negotiations work.

“This amounted to state-sponsored hostage-taking,” explains Joseph Fiennes, who acts as Richard Ratcliffe in the BBC’s four-part drama the series Prisoner 951. “This clearly happens, and innocent people and households are totally disturbed and stigmatized forever. After portraying this account, I regard people charged with crimes with wrongdoing, and I am skeptical.”

In July 2016, it was plain that something had gone terribly wrong. A dual national, Nazanin was imprisoned on spying charges, away from her little girl. She was accused of plotting to topple the government in Iran, of working for MI6, “empowering women” (in a questioning session) and earning money illegally. It sounded fanciful. Her job was with the press outlet Reuters – though not in its reporting department, instead its charitable foundation – and she had appropriate purposes in Iran, traveling with her daughter to meet her parents.

Had the accusations appeared questionable to an unschooled audience, it raised greater concerns even more in the Iranian diaspora, as Narges Rashidi, who portrays Nazanin and was from Khorramabad in Iran (moving to Germany when she was seven) states. “We were all very aware that there was no basis to the made-up reasons they said she was being held.”

However, the UK had just undergone Brexit, and the day after the appeal reached Cameron, Theresa May assumed office as PM. The news agenda only had eyes for political turmoil, and Boris Johnson unexpectedly became the foreign minister, with terrible consequences. Probably the most attention the family got in this period was when Johnson made his egregious remarks the following year, that she’d been “training people in reporting, as I understand it”, which was untrue and gave heft to the Iranian state’s fabricated claims, worsening her situation.

Notwithstanding the data and sporadic discussion, which Richard Ratcliffe worked so hard to maintain while Nazanin fought to preserve her hope, the personal experience of this kidnapping is deeply disturbing to see reenacted in the show. Rashidi, known for another drama, sounds so much like Zaghari-Ratcliffe it’s astonishing. She attributes this to her language trainer: her actual English accent is neutral and she resides in Los Angeles.

Rashidi watched everything: interviews with Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and the heartstopping but understated meeting with her daughter. Additionally, surprising footage available: somehow the instant of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s capture at the terminal has appeared on the internet. “A little tiny bit of footage; she had no idea that she was being filmed.”

In the drama, she is walking a fine line, caught between the belief in her righteousness and the doubt that, if you can be arrested over baseless claims, what is the limit? With hindsight, that she would be in incarcerated for six long years, it is profoundly upsetting to see these events unfold in the feelings she displays. Her fight not to lose control; her unsuccessful try to resist the chaos of official might. “In my view,” Rashidi says, “this is a distinct Nazanin to the later period. I witnessed an individual extremely petrified and quite vulnerable, unaware what is happening to her. I encountered her fortitude later, after this complete trial.”

Fiennes “was fortunate of sitting with Richard”, he says. “Such access is rare with the person you’re playing, and he’s a forensic accountant. The persistence, where you arrive at the stage of ‘Show me the {bloody receipt|actual proof|concrete evidence’, is in his DNA.” That makes it a heartbreaking experience too, as this pretty establishment guy slowly and then swiftly loses trust in the things he used to trust: experts, officials, the government, other conventional people. “He assumed the London administration would have it in hand, but it didn’t happen. He was repeatedly deceived, given untruths continuously.”

Richard Ratcliffe went through five top diplomats during the years she was incarcerated: a succession of officials. Both individuals would consistently remain the final item on the official’s agenda after they’d settled into the post, and by the time they considered the situation, their time in office was over. Within the series, it requires time for Ratcliffe to see that “an arms trade apparatus operating here,” Fiennes says, “and it lacks openness. It works behind official channels, and these are individuals that became entangled in it.”

There’s a bit in which Ratcliffe enters angrily the minister’s room (he then held the position for the Middle East and North Africa), “and just rants at him. He truly breaks down. His appearance is disheveled. He is engaged in the eighteenth day without food, he’s at rock bottom. However, considerable pressure for Richard to get to that place. {He’s not liberated|He isn