Prisoner 951 is a powerful four-part BBC factual drama that tells the true story of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who was arrested in Iran in 2016 on espionage charges she denied, and her husband. Richard Ratcliffewho fought for her release.
Starring Narges Rashidi and Joseph Fiennes, the series is written by Stephen Butchard and directed by Philippa Lowthorpe. Based on the upcoming memoir A yard of heaven by Nazanin and Richard, the drama spans her arrest at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport, years of imprisonment and hunger strikes, and her eventual release in 2022.
Prisoner 951 premiered on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on 23 November 2025.
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How to watch Prisoner 951 for free on BBC iPlayer
The BBC’s online streaming site, BBC iPlayer, streams Prisoner 951 free — you can watch all four episodes from November 23.
How to watch Prisoner 951 on BBC iPlayer anywhere
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Prisoner 951 – Full Episode Guide:
▶︎ Section 1
A woman is torn from her baby, accused of crimes she did not commit, and imprisoned in Iran. In London, her husband refuses to be silent. Then begins a campaign to free her.
▶︎ Section 2
Locked in solitary confinement after her transfer to Evin prison, a hopeless Nazanin takes drastic action. In London, Richard reveals the reason for his wife’s abduction.
▶︎ Section 3
Nazanin’s loneliness ends and she finds solace among fellow prisoners. In London, a careless comment by an MP risks derailing her case. Richard and Nazanin make an agonizing family decision.
▶︎ Section 4
Nazanin, still imprisoned, is devastated when her daughter returns to Britain. Richard has to learn how to be a father again and decides to go on hunger strike to bring his wife home.
Q&A interview with Joseph Fiennes (Richard Ratcliffe)
What did you learn about Nazanin and Richard’s story?
The big lesson for me is waking up to the notion that innocent people – and in this case an innocent dual citizen – can be held hostage by the state. What we don’t realize are the behind the scenes events and issues that can invariably have, as it did in this case, an effect on the privacy of innocent people.
What I found incredible were the wider events surrounding Nazanin and Richard’s story. So now I watch the news when someone is accused by a country of spying and think maybe it’s not that straightforward. As for this story, what I found extraordinary is the fact that the British MOD had engaged with Iran to manufacture tanks when I was just born in 1970, and 40 years after the debt had not been settled and paid due to sanctions. Once the sanctions were lifted, the debt legally had to be paid, as The Hague had reached that decision. 40 years on an innocent mother and child, a family, is completely decimated by the actions of a country that has decided to take a citizen as security for that debt. It is a story about ordinary people drawn into the horror of an extraordinary situation.
What attracted you to the role?
First and foremost, it was Stephen’s writing that I felt was politically engaging. It’s going to be a kind of thriller, it’s very real, prescient and it happened in my time. I felt the extraordinary love story that develops throughout the series, the love of family members and between the prisoners who help each other get through terrible events. There’s this human drama juxtaposed with the political, we have two stories running alongside each other, but they’re both joined at the hip by the notion of deep love and of how people get through the darkest times, that’s what attracted me.
The second reason was Philippa, to meet her and know her work. When you have extraordinary figureheads in our industry leading these kinds of issues, it’s really enriching for me to be a part of it.
Did you do any special preparation for this role, such as learning a skill or language?
It’s interesting to talk about skills, Richard’s skill is definitely auditing, he’s a forensic auditor so that’s his super skill. I have a feeling that part of that diligence really put him ahead of most of us in dealing with this extraordinary crisis. At every opportunity his phrase would be “show me the receipts”, that’s his way of getting to the truth.
I didn’t have to learn how to audit or go to accounting school, but I talked to Richard at length for several hours. As for the research, it was about meeting him in person, feeling his spirit, feeling his physicality, hearing first hand the events he and his family had to go through; then I put it together with the script and my idea of Richard in our drama world.
What was it like preparing to film Richard’s hunger strike scenes?
Like all film shoots, the shooting schedule is never consistent with the story timeline, in some cases I have shot the very end of a film or series on the first day. When we got to the sequence where Richard is on hunger strike, the week before or the next, we would be in a scene which would invariably be one where he looked much healthier. So there was no chance to go deep into a weight loss. During the hunger strike shooting days, I had plenty of tea and liquids instead of solids, but there wasn’t enough time in the schedule to physically put my body through what Richard would have gone through.
What was the most memorable scene to film?
I have to say the thing that sticks out to me is the sisterhood in the prison, I love those scenes. I am not in them, but I was there in those days and saw the re-creation of the prisons. The set design and feeling of being there was made so vivid and real by the extraordinary talents of our set and costume design teams.
But otherwise I couldn’t pinpoint a specific scene. The series is about love and family support. We have a British family and a Persian family, although there are big cultural differences, they were all completely alike in their love and support for each other. I felt that the family related scenes were really integral and I loved being in the ones that showed how that support helped Richard and Nazanin through this horrible chapter in their lives.
Read the full interview on bbc.co.uk
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