Post by Admin on Jan 30, 2015 15:19:14 GMT
The Missing sets out its stall on incredibly emotive territory. In the scenes set in the present, we see that the couple have not made it through the turmoil and have separated. Tony is drinking heavily and his wife, Emily (played by Frances O’Connor), has moved on with a detective assigned to liaise with the family after Olly’s disappearance. By going into the past, their backstory is slowly established, taking in corrupt officials, violence, abuse, a potential sighting, phone hacking, a deathbed confession and an affluent but questionable architect played by Ken Stott.
It’s harrowing stuff and there are times when Nesbitt’s character appears to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. His face ashen and his hair greying as every possible lead turns out to be a false dawn. With his wife having tried to get on with her life, the present day Tony is assisted by Julien Baptiste, a French detective with a limp who has retired but stood by Tony while the rest of the world has looked at him like a man still trying to find his coat weeks after he left it at the pub. He too cannot shake his suspicions about the case and together they begin to weave the two sides of this morbid tapestry together, edging closer to the truth with every determined move.
If Tony is the obsessive father with tunnel vision then his ex-wife Emily has a more widescreen outlook on the case. She has built a life in which she is not constantly reminded of the night Olly was taken. This is a bone of contention between the now divorced couple – he thinks she doesn’t care enough. But it’s her efforts to cope with such horror that makes picking at the scab all the more painful for her. O’Connor has arguably the harder of the two parts to play: while Nesbitt gets to rage at the injustice of it all, she has to subtly portray the mindset of a woman who had the most precious thing taken away from her and is learning how to cope with dignity. In one of the most affecting scenes from the immediate aftermath of their son’s disappearance, they return to the quaint B&B and just sob in each other’s arms. It’s a crushing reminder that when the distraction of the hunt ends for the day, the pain remains a constant.
Plot-wise, The Missing takes many twists and turns. You will soon learn to trust nobody, second guessing every character and questioning the motives of all involved. Only journalist Malik Suri is constant in his actions and he is a bloodthirsty hack seemingly drafted in from another, less realistic, series. Writers Harry and Jack Williams clearly love a red herring, just one of the many traits The Missing shares with its Nordic noir counterparts, and the misdirection ensures nothing can be deemed certain right up until the final, heart-wrenching moments of the eight episodes.
The Missing is not always an easy watch and takes pride in its realism, emotionally and in its clear similarity to the real-life cases such as that of Madeleine McCann. It has proved a huge ratings hit though, one of the biggest British dramas since Broadchurch. With the prolific use of rape and torture of women as entertainment in TV drama, a keenly debated subject, you would hope that child kidnap and murder will not become a similar trend. However, by dealing sensitively with emotions connected to, and the long-term fall out of, such a case, this is a series that entirely justified its bleak subject matter. The only thing missing now is lots and lots of awards.