The Missing review – hauntingly brilliant television
This eight-part thriller is not mawkish, or overly sentimental; just very human, and very very sad. James Nesbitt is so very very good at pain; he doesn’t just share it, he forces it on you
Share 1
inShare0
Email
Sam Wollaston
Sam Wollaston
Follow @samwollaston Follow @guardiantv
The Guardian, Wednesday 29 October 2014
Jump to comments (3)
James Nesbitt in The Missing. James Nesbitt in The Missing. Photograph: Liam Daniel/BBC/New Pictures Ltd
“Ours are never going swimming again,” says my missus. “Or to watch football, or to France, or out of the house. Or my sight.” Oh, dear. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to watch The Missing (BBC1). But it is testament to the power of brothers Harry and Jack Williams’s drama, about the disappearance of five-year-old Oliver from a family holiday in France.
It’s hard not to think about the McCanns. And then - guiltily - about other children who have gone missing less publicly. Mostly though, certainly for anyone with children, it’s hard - impossible - not to imagine it happening to you.
There are several unbearable moments in The Missing. A sighting of Oliver that turns out not to be him but another little boy. His mother Emily (Frances O’Connor) waking up from the anaesthesia of sleep, and it suddenly hitting, the realisation that it wasn’t just a terrible dream, that her only son has gone.
The one that got me, though, is that first moment when it sinks in. Olly and dad Tony (James Nesbitt) have had their swim and have gone to the bar to get a drink, a bar that is full of people watching France playing Brazil in the World Cup final (the real event, Ronaldo on the screen, which adds an element of authenticity). Suddenly Oliver’s not there, and Tony’s running around, everywhere, directionless, shouting his name. And there’s that feeling, a quicker heartbeat, nausea, sickness and a tightening in the pit of the stomach, that every parent has felt when they’ve lost a child. For most of us, it’s only a few moments, before the little b....r turns up in the biscuits aisle or wherever. Not for the Hughes family, though. Tony’s cries of “Olly” become more and more desperate, and lost among the jubilation of a nation celebrating great sporting triumph.
Then there’s another noise, a crescendo-ing electronic high-pitched discordant screech, taking over the soundtrack and drowning out Tony and the jubilant street. What is it? It’s the noise inside Tony’s head, the sound of a father’s realisation he has lost his son, the sound of the greatest pain. (And Nesbitt is so very very good at pain; he doesn’t just share it, he forces it on you.)
The Missing is not mawkish, or overly sentimental; it’s just very human, and very very sad. It’s also a thriller, about a hunt and an investigation, by the police initially, then by a father, with the help of a retired French detective. The press (British, of course) are also involved, though it’s not yet clear how. I imagine in a thoroughly disreputable way.
The thriller side of things is excellent, too, and provides the momentum to carry it through eight episodes. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, with only the left edge complete (Olly’s disappearance in 1998, time goes from left to right). And quite a lot of the right side has been done, though not one very important bit (but perhaps, as with so many real cases of disappearances, that part will never be completed, those pieces too are missing). In the middle are a lot of big spaces – not just to do with Olly and the investigation, but also with relationship breakdowns, and new relationships, and smears., and all the rest of the crap that accompanies something like this.
Most importantly, that noise, and the sickening feeling that accompanies it, never goes away. Even when it’s not actually there, on the soundtrack, it’s in your head. And however intriguing The Missing is as a thriller, it never lets you forget that at its heart is the story of loss and pain. Hauntingly brilliant television.
(...)
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/29/the-missing-james-nesbitt-review#start-of-comments
