THE PUPPET MASTER: HUNTING THE ULTIMATE CONMAN

UK, 2021, 127 minutes, Colour.

Charlie Ives, Stephen Corrall, Richard Peter O'Sullivan, and the actual central characters as themselves.

Directed by Sam Bernstead, Gareth Johnson.

This is a Netflix documentary series, three parts, focusing on the notorious conman, Robert Freegard. This documentary was released in January 2022. Later that same year, there was a feature film on Freegard starring James Norton.

For those who watch the documentary series, first the drama with James Norton, Rogue Agent, brings the character himself to charming and sinister life, understanding him as a character. For those who watch the film first, the documentary dramatises two episodes which feature in Rogue Agent plus a narrative which takes place after Freegard was released from jail in 2009.

The documentary focuses on three episodes with Freegard, using the narrative device of a visual of a list of years, horizontally, and the camera moving backwards and forwards. The main story is that of the early part of Rogue Agent, Freegard working in a bar, choosing young students for training in security, telling them what he belong to MI5. He takes control of their lives, getting money from them and their families, one escaping, John Atkinson (who is interviewed, himself, extensively throughout the documentary), but the main attention given to Sarah Smith (Sophie in the feature film). Sophie and her fate are important to Road Agent, but here is the opportunity for Sarah Smith herself to speak to camera (dramatised, docudrama style, by actress Charlie Ives as Sarah but, later in the film, the actual Sarah Smith also appearing). In Rogue Agent, the third young person is visualised, having two children by Freegard and his appearing and disappearing in their lives. In the documentary, this is referred to verbally.

In both films, Sara/Sophie’s parents are significant, her being absent for 10 years, the initial visit from Freegard and the young people, Sophie’s disappearance, requests for money. There is a great deal of speaking to camera by Sophie’s father, played by actor, Peter Corrall, most convincing as the father.

With this story, the dates go backwards and forwards, especially to a story after Freegard’s release, two young people, with flashbacks to them in their younger days, then in the present, in 2021, discussing what happened to them and their mother, their love for her, separation from husband but his continued concern about her (also appearing with some forcefulness and emotion in the documentary), her disappearance with Freegard, calling himself David Hendy.

The documentary also opens up a third story, around 2003, concerning Freegard and his relationship with an American, her dependence on him, and someone willing connivance with him to say that she had been sitting for MI5 training courses and failing, requiring money from her parents to pay for these alleged courses. This story is also paralleled in Rogue Agent, filling out more details about the relationship between the two and the connection with the parents as well as the contact with the American Embassy in FBI agents. In the documentary, an agent speaks to camera at length about the situation, about investigations. An actor takes on the role of Scotland Yard officer, explaining investigations into Freegard, and the final setting up of the sting at Heathrow airport to arrest him, which is also dramatised as docudrama, but persuasively so that audiences would be thinking they were watching the real thing. Despite difficulties and the American mother not following the detailed plan of the sting, Freegard was arrested, in court, sentenced to life, an appeal, an argument that the taking of the people may have been psychological but not physical and therefore he was not guilty. He was released in 2009.

This is a kind of intriguing documentary that audiences appreciate. And, it is very interesting, to watch in connection with Rogue Agent where James Norton brings some of the reality of Robert Freegard to life (but there is significant dramatisation about is relationships, and a pursuit of him by one woman played by Gemma Arteton).

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