An extraordinary tale: BBC2’s The Countess and the Russian Billionaire reviewed

There can’t be many programmes that bring to mind quotations from both Henry Kissinger and Boney M., but BBC2’s The Countess and the Russian Billionaire was one of them. While Kissinger’s idea that ‘power is the ultimate aphrodisiac’ may be a little out of fashion in the #MeToo age, it was hard not to think it played a part in the eye-popping events that Wednesday’s documentary laid out with some relish. As for Boney M., rarely has ‘Oh, those Russians’ from ‘Rasputin’ felt so penetratingly insightful.

The programme began filming in 2015, with the apparent aim of providing a ringside seat at a fight between an excitingly wealthy British-based couple and the Russian government. The makers, though, mustn’t have been able to believe their luck at what happened over the next few years.

With such an extraordinary tale to tell, this couldn’t really go wrong – although it sometimes did its best

When we first met Countess Alexandra Tolstoy — the impeccably English daughter of an émigré family — she was living with her three children in two neighbouring Chelsea townhouses, where she showed us her extensive shoe collection and a carefully filed handbag cupboard (the filing, of course, done by a housekeeper).