Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story (BBC1)
North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un uses doubles as decoys to thwart assassins. Russian President Vladimir Putin is said to have a whole troop of such doubles. And now Piers Morgan also has his own double.
Robert Glenister imitated the gruff presenter’s gestures and voice with astonishing accuracy in the true-crime drama Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story. Using an accurate transcript from Good Morning Britain, he sat slumped in a pose that expressed both boredom and annoyance, alongside Louise Delamere as co-presenter Susannah Reid.
The scene provided a clever means of explaining this story, as Piers and Susannah summed up why Chloe (played here by Nadia Parkes) was on the show. In Milan in 2017, she was arrested for a photoshoot by masked men who drugged her before being held for ransom in a farmhouse in the Italian mountains.
A skeptical Piers accused her of lying to the police and wanted to know why, if she was being held hostage, one of her kidnappers had taken her to a nearby village to go shopping.
Chloe Ayling’s (pictured: Nadia Parkes plays Chloe) horrific story has been retold in a new television series, Kidnapped
The six-part drama is about her horrific kidnapping, her courage in captivity and the court case that put her kidnappers behind bars (pictured: Nadia Parkes as Chloe)
Social media was full of accusations that the story was a staged publicity event (pictured: Chloe at Celebrity Big Brother)
In a prime example of how obsessed television is with celebrities and themselves, the real Chloe reappeared on the sofa with actress Nadia yesterday to be interviewed by Rylan and Josie Gibson for This Morning.
Piers wasn’t the only one to question Chloe’s kidnapping allegations. Social media was awash with accusations that the story was a set-up to gain publicity. The main accusations against her were that she didn’t seem upset enough, that she didn’t try to escape or scream for help while shopping, and that it all sounded completely improbable.
This six-part drama, which began with the first two half-hour episodes, takes Chloe’s story at face value but challenges viewers to provide their own explanations for what really went down.
Although she was kidnapped by at least two men, we only see one, known by his initials MD. He tells her that she was kidnapped by a gang of human traffickers who will auction her off as a slave on the dark web if she cannot buy her freedom.
Chloe Ayling’s story aired on BBC Three at 9pm on Wednesday.
Lukasz Herba (pictured, in court) is still behind bars after being sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2018. This was also later reduced by five years and he is expected to be released early next year.
But as he begs her for sex and tries to gain her trust by bringing her food and letting her sleep in his bed, she doesn’t know if he is a lonely dreamer or a puppet of an organized crime gang – and her only chance of survival.
Nadia Parkes delivers a terrific performance: dressed up for the television cameras, but dazed, disheveled and confused as a hostage.
Writer Georgia Lester draws parallels between Chloe’s life in captivity and her role in the fashion industry. Wherever she goes, she is seen as an object for sale and exploitation. In a flashback, Adrian Edmondson, as her sweaty agent, puts a tape measure around her thighs and then scolds her for eating “doughnuts and spring rolls.”
Whatever the truth of Chloe’s ordeal, young women like her have little protection in a predatory world. Glamour is a greedy business.
