There's some stories that the documentary form can't cope with. They're too unbelievable, too intricate and too unreliable to do justice to.

Garri Urban's lifestory is such a yarn. Born into a Jewish shtetl in Poland in 1916, he fled the Nazis and certain death (most of his family were liquidated) and headed into the Soviet sector.

However, Stalinism didn't appeal to the headstrong young doctor, so he attempted to swim from Russian territory to Romania. Caught in a hail of bullets, he had to tell his Red Army captors: "Tovarisch (comrade) I am not dead" when they pulled him from the water.

Sentenced to five years in the icy wastes of the Gulag - where temperatures plunged to -40C - it was only his skill as a doctor that saved his life. "Borrowing" an NKVD uniform he escaped to Moscow.

There he met former model Noka Kapranova, a designer at Moscow's only fashion magazine, but fate caught up with him again when he picked up by the KGB while out buying cigarettes. Needless to say, he managed to escape their clutches and flee the country.

His son, director Stuart Urban, has plundered footage from video diaries over a 14-year period as well as 16mm home movies from the 1950s in a partially successful attempt to construct a patchwork of Garri's life.

What emerges is an extraordinary man, an emotional powerhouse driven by a sense of what is right but more than capable of being a grade A pain in the neck should the situation arise.

Unfortunately, his rivetting chronicle is often let down by a plodding, leaden commentary and a style that jumps around so much you lose the thread.

Nevertheless, we're left with some intriguing conundrums including the suggestion that Urban Snr also managed to pack some spying for Stalin into his action-packed life.

Tim Evans