Horrifying but gripping: Netflix’s The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman reviewed

It’s 1993 and you’re studying at a top agricultural college with a bright future ahead of you, perhaps in farming or land management, when a chance conversation with a barman all but ruins your life.

The barman tells you that he is an agent working for MI5, spying on an IRA cell in college, one of whose members happens to be your flatmate. You might be sceptical but the agent is very persuasive; and besides, someone from your college has indeed just been arrested for supplying bomb-making equipment to the IRA. When the agent warns you that you and your flatmates are in serious danger and must go on the run, you’re inclined to take him seriously.

So begins one of the most horrifying cases of protracted psychological abuse you’re ever likely to encounter. Three Harper Adams students, a boy and two girls, were gulled, bullied and manipulated into zigzagging the country in a succession of cramped, beaten-up cars, staying in cheap lodgings for rarely more than a day at a time, all but forbidden from contacting their loved ones, not for weeks, not for months, but for ten whole years,

Two of those victims, John Atkinson and his then-girlfriend Sarah Smith, have bravely agreed to speak on camera for the three-part Netflix documentary The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman.