Litvinenko

The entire series is buoyed by its performances. ... But it’s Levieva’s Marina who steals the show, despite being criminally underused, only coming to the fore in the final episode as she demands a public enquiry from the British Government. Litvinenko is far from dull, but that’s less down to the crafting of the series and more due to the riveting story it is telling.

Largely because its arguments have already been persuasively made, and also because there’s been no real justice for the murder of its subject, Litvinenko runs out of steam before it reaches its destination. Still, thanks to a collection of sturdy performances and a clear-sighted recitation of the evidence, it lays bare Putin’s willingness to go to extreme measures to achieve his ends.

It's where the show leans into the emotional core of those affected by this awful crime that episodes 2 and 4, the lesser chapters, shine brightest, rather than in their more traditional police procedural or court room trappings. ... Unfortunately this does make episode 4, which dramatises Marina Litvinenko's years-long legal battle for justice, the weakest of the bunch.

Litvinenko is sensitive and tactful, almost to a fault. But in a world where complex questions about Anglo-Russian relations dominate discussions in the corridors of power, it has little to add other than slack-jawed amazement.

Unfortunately, in execution, Litvinenko is a middling miniseries that is sporadically interesting though ultimately never comes together, even as it grasps at something more. For all its committed performances, it is a work whose dramatic elements are too haphazardly and hurriedly sketched to leave an impact.

Well, it’s presently dryly and chronologically and truthfully, which happens to be the least compelling way to tell this story. The second episode, smarting a little from Tennant’s abrupt arrival and then absence, loses all momentum.

This shouldn’t have been a rush job. There has been the opportunity to work on the story of his life and his death and transmute it – especially in a time when dictatorial regimes, violence and governmental lawlessness are in the ascendant – into something better, broader, more meaningful than this.