The Missing: Series 2 review

The Missing was a successful television series written by the Williams brothers, Harry and Jack, which first appeared in 2014 starring James Nesbitt as a desperate father looking for his missing son after he disappears in France on a family holiday.  The series showed two parallel timelines between the incident when the boy disappears to the investigation some time later, led by the inquisitive detective Julien Baptiste (Tcheky Karyo).

The series ended in a somewhat downbeat finale with Nesbitt's character traversing rural Europe still looking for his boy, with many characters broken beyond repair.  Many reviewers thought the series was a stand alone one, with little comeback expected.  Yet the Williams' have returned with a second series, this time however, Baptiste is the focal point of the drama.

Baptiste, is still on the trial of the missing girl Sophie Giroux, and his interest is pricked when a young British girl, Alice Webster, goes missing near to her home at the military camp of Eckhausen, Germany.  When Baptiste begins his investigations in 2014, he is of sound mind and his investigations begins to upset people as more skeletons are let out of the closet.

Again we have a dual narrative as we follow the fall-out of Alice's disappearance in 2014, along with the present day when 'Alice' supposedly returns to her home after escaping captivity.  However, as with most mystery-thrillers nothing is what it seems and the labyrinthe storyline takes the viewer on many twists and turns as Baptiste - who is fighting a brain tumour - becomes a pivotal figure travelling to the Middle East to uncover the truth when a military cover-up may be happening.

In this day and age, the sensitive subject matter of false imprisonment (Josef Fritzel among others) and the unsavoury detail of child sex abuse, the Williams' have taken these topics and used them to great effect to create a story of fear and mystery.

While the thread has been stretched over the eight episodes, we could have perhaps done without the sojourn to the Middle East, nevertheless the acting has been top notch. Karyo brings a rare humility to Baptiste, whose desire to find justice is all conquering even to the detriment of his short-term health.  Keeley Hawes, as Alice's mother, Gemma, continues her purple patch of recent roles bringing a steel to a grieving mother and while David Morrissey's Sam can come across a bit chauvinistic and ignorant, he portrays the rigidness expected of a stubborn man.

The entire ensemble helps elevate the series to your run of the mill whodunit show; from Laura Fraser as the cold Eve Stone, who is pregnant when we first meet her, sleeps with Sam and has to protect her weak with dementia father, Adrian (Roger Allam).  Yet the casting is superb across the board, from Julien's wife, Celia (Anastasia Hille) who share those brilliant intimate moments with Karyo pleading for him to return home to Derek Riddell as Press Liasion officer, Adam Gettrick; the performances are impressive throughout, not to mention the sterling work of the young cast especially Abigail Hardingham in various guises of Alice and Sophie.

In a year of great drama on the BBC and the current clamour for true fiction such as 'Making A Murderer' it is great to see an original drama have you gripped from episode one to its conclusion; and even rarer to see a drama's second series be better than the original. The Missing Series 2 is the The Godfather Part 2 of television drams in that sense. That is the highest praise you can give this terrific series.

The Missing (Series 2) will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on 26th December from Aim Publicity.

The Missing

The BBC drama The Missing starring James Nesbitt and Frances O'Connor garners a DVD release on 26th December from RLJ Entertainment.

The show gained a huge following when it aired through October to December 2014 on BBC One, gripping the nation with its tale about the abduction of a young British boy when in France from his parents during an idyllic vacation.

Written by brothers, Harry and Jack Williams and directed by Tom Shankland, the series successfully told the dual narrative as we had two timelines of the initial abduction in 2006 along with the re-opening of the case in the present day. The 2006 storyline shows the beginning of the grip the abduction of Oliver Hughes will have on his father Tom (played superbly by Nesbitt) and the eventual breakdown of the marriage to Emily, with O'Connor playing the desperation and despair to perfection.

While the series is ultimately something to remember for its acting with uniformly brilliant performances across the board, the writing at times does let the show down and the eventual denouement is one of lacklustre and frustration.

This is indicative of series in general, it draws an audience in but then does not know how to credibly render and end the series by giving a narrative a convincing finale without becoming sentimental or hokum.  The sort of story in real life does not usually have a happy ending, but for the characters you wish only a sense of closure and not the sight of Nesbitt marauding through Eastern Europe in constant anguish in attempt to chase away his demons.

This is not to dispel from the overall quality of the production, the differing tones of filming between the light and breezy 2006 and the colder, more sombre present day cinematography as if the past is but a dream for Emily and Tony.

The acting is of a truly superior standard especially from a career-best Nesbitt who never resorts to histrionics in his performance but special praise is reserved for Tcheky Karyo as Julien Baptiste, the French detective of the original case who goes through the biggest metamorphosis physically in the series from a close to retiring detective to a man clearly shaken by all that has happened in the case, now with a limp and greyer in his hair colour the years have not been kind to him.  When Karyo speaks, he speaks wisdom and you hang on every word.

The Missing is one of those rare drama series that had you gripped from the start and but for the less than pleasing ending (when in real life cases there are few happy endings), this is a series that deserves awards come the awards season.

The Missing is out now on DVD from RLJ Entertainment