The first episode of “Litvinenko”, the new real-TV series on espionage and international politics launched by the British network ITV and on the ITVX platform, which we will soon be able to see also on Sky, is on the air in the UK. It is the story of the dissident colonel of the Russian secret services Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with Polonium 210 in 2006 in London while he was in a sushi bar with the Italian expert on Russian intelligence Mario Scaramella, secondary victim of the attack. According to Scotland Yard, the murder was carried out by Russian agents on the orders of Vladimir Putin, precisely because of the investigations that the two were conducting into Moscow’s espionage.
The docu-series is the allegedly realistic account written by Jorge Kay, the author of Lupine, of the most complete, complex and expensive investigation in the history of Scotland Yard: 200 men and 40,000 hours of investigation to shed light on the poisoning case that occurred on November 1, 2006 in the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly, where Scaramella was meeting his source, the Colonel, in fact, who will later turn out to be fatally poisoned by a radioactive substance.
Beyond the initial evidence, suggestive also for the dying victim (who will accuse Scaramella of being an enemy agent in Putin’s service) and which indicate the suspicious place in the sushi bar and in Scaramella the person of interest, the investigators, supported by the British specials and the American FBI, come to overturn the first reconstructions and discover a trail of polonium that starts from Moscow and arrives in Alexander Litvnenko’s cup of tea at the hands of Andrej Lugovoi and Andrey Kovtun, two officers of the Moscow secret services.
Produced by Patrick Spence, Joe Williams and Chris May and directed by director Jim Field Smith, the series, in four episodes, makes use of an important cast, with David Tennant in the role of the dying victim, Margarita Levieva in the role of Marina, the widow of colonel, and the British actor of Italian origins Antonio Magro who plays Scaramella. The story reconstructs the police investigation and then the public inquiry, giving voice to detectives Hyatt and Dawson of the English Counter-Terrorism (who provided consultancy to the production) and to the widow Marina, to whom the series is dedicated.
As for Putin, to whom the English justice and a special commission of inquiry presided over by the Judge of the High Court of London Sir Robert Owen have attributed the role of probable instigator, the film’s denunciation is clearer: without diplomatic overtones, the series points the finger against the Russian president, accused of having ordered the most expensive assassination in history, the first with a radioactive weapon, in the heart of London.