On Thin Ice: Putin v Greenpeace review

This documentary series about an anti-oil protest gone wrong is absolutely gripping. It features guns, helicopters and nearly drowning while in mid-air

This six-part BBC documentary tells the story of the group who became known as the Arctic 30: two journalists and 28 Greenpeace campaigners, whose imprisonment for three months in a Russian jail in 2013 was the subject of international outrage. The incarceration and the diplomatic row it caused are to come in later episodes. For the opening double bill, On Thin Ice: Putin v Greenpeace is a chaotic thriller, an exciting, enraging and inspiring cross between Captain Phillips and Total Wipeout.

Interviewed now, members of the Arctic 30 recall a planned protest that was, with or without hindsight, somewhat rash. The state-controlled Russian oil company Gazprom was about to begin drilling in the Arctic and Greenpeace’s ship Arctic Sunrise was to travel to the oilfield to slow the project down and draw attention to its huge environmental costs. Activists would scale the Prirazlomnaya rig in the Pechora Sea. Then, a survival pod with people inside was to be winched into the air, leaving it dangling from the edge of the platform for as long as possible.