Prisoner 951 true story: How accurate is the BBC drama to the real events?

New BBC drama Prisoner 951 tells a true story many viewers may recognise from the news, as the events dramatised took place just years ago, between 2016 and 2022.

The story surrounds Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an British-Iranian woman who was imprisoned in Iran for six years, as her husband and many others campaigned tirelessly to bring her home.

The series stars Narges Rashidi as Nazanin, while Joseph Fiennes plays her husband, Richard Ratcliffe. But just how closely does the series stick to real events and what are the details of the true story behind the programme?

Read on for everything you need to know about the true story behind Prisoner 951.

What is Prisoner 951 about?

Prisoner 951 tells the true story of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen who travelled to Iran with her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella in 2016.

As they were waiting to board their flight back to the UK, they were arrested by Iranian authorities and Gabriella's passport was confiscated.

Iranian officials accused Nazanin of leading a "foreign-linked hostile network", and she was sentenced to five years in jail. She has always denied those allegations, and said that she was only in Iran to visit her family.

Over the proceeding months and years her husband Richard campaigned in the UK for Nazanin to be freed and brought home, something which was finally achieved after six years, in 2022.

Richard and Nazanin have repeatedly asserted that she was a pawn in a decades-old political dispute between the Iranian government and the UK, relating to a debt the latter owed.

The UK government has always denied that the two issues were linked, but her freedom, and the freedom of other imprisoned dual nationals, was only secured after the debt was paid.

Is Prisoner 951 based on a book?

It is, however viewers won't be able to get their hands on it for some time yet.

Prisoner 951 is based not only on extensive research by the team behind the programme, but also on the firsthand accounts of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband Richard Ratcliffe in their forthcoming book, A Yard of Sky.

The book is scheduled to be released on the 3rd September 2026.

How accurate is Prisoner 951 to the true story?

The series dramatises events from the first-hand accounts and perspectives on events of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe, and therefore, others may have differing versions to tell.

It is also noted at the start of each episode that some names have been changed as the story is brought to the screen and, as in every factual drama, some scenes have been imagined.

However, for the most part it appears to be the case that Prisoner 951 has been very faithful to the real events as they occurred.

When asked about the research he and the team took, writer Stephen Butchard said: "It was a case of speaking to the people involved, some members of the government and trying to get minutes of meetings. This is as true and factful as we can make it, everything that’s on screen we’ve tried to back up with records of the real events.

"We were speaking to MPs and politicians, and family members resident in the UK, asking how they remembered things. It was about making it as truthful and as based on fact as possible. When you’re dealing with a drama like this that’s the responsibility you have.

"We also spoke to people who had been detained, related charities, Nazanin’s employers, and human rights lawyers. All the time we were building up the relevant and factual information."

Meanwhile, director Philippa Lowthorpe said that when she was directing, she always had Nazanin and Richard's words from their book in her head as well as the scripts.

"During our editing I constantly went back and checked things they'd written to make it feel faithful to their experience," she explained.

It should also be noted that, given that the series is four hours long, it is not able to put to screen every notable moment from across the six years it dramatises.

Butchard explained that he decided "quite early on" to structure the series with more detail at the start of Nazanin and Richard's ordeal, and less as the episodes and as time went on, to in some ways mirror their experiences of it.

"I was putting myself into Richard and Nazanin’s point of view from when this all started," he said. "What that gives us is hours and days, because those first hours and first days are really frightening. In episode one there’s a lot there; Nazanin is arrested at the airport, Richard is told there might be something wrong with a passport.

"They’re not sure what is going on, but things can happen at the airport in Iran and maybe she’ll just be held for 24 hours, but this doesn’t happen... Then Richard is told he should be concerned and consider this an abduction, Nazanin goes missing.

"So, I decided to concentrate just in this first episode on hours and days because there is a lot happening to Nazanin and Richard. It’s about mining into the very human emotions of our protagonists.

"That led on to thinking if episode one is ‘hours and days’, episode two could be ‘weeks’ – where things are changing over the space of weeks.

"That lead on to episode three as ‘months’, then once Nazanin is sentenced and it doesn’t look like there is much hope that led to looking at the final episode as ‘years’. To me, that seemed like a good structure, looking at it as points in time."

Prisoner 951 will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from Sunday 23rd November 2025.

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