This morning I learned that one of the many plot lines in the British TV show Bodies has been lifted from real life:

The Tichborne case was a legal cause célèbre that captivated Victorian England in the 1860s and 1870s. It concerned the claims by a man sometimes referred to as Thomas Castro or as Arthur Orton, but usually termed “the Claimant”, to be the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy.

It goes without saying that the real-life Claimant was not as successful as the fictional one — this is why Wikipedia makes for better reading than most fiction.