The Missing

There used to be a time when television was an event, where people would huddle around the office water-cooler (regardless of whether their workplace came with one or not) and discuss the previous night’s TV. A time when even living alone wouldn’t negate TV’s social power: you could simply discuss it the next day in work. Now in the age of Netflix, there is to cite Margaret Thatcher ‘no such thing as society.’ The programme that you watch might not even be the one the person sitting next to is watching. With our iMacs, iPhones and iPads we’ve become a nation of ‘I’s,’ slavishly following our own interests at the expense of shared experience.

It’s something that I feel people miss. It must be, otherwise Twitter wouldn’t be such a phenomenon. I mean, why do broadcasters footnote their shows with hashtags? Because they know that people want a forum to opine, to trade, to disagree. As choice segregates culture, we’re forced online to find strangers to share it with. Should it matter that as a nation the only time we sit down and watch television together is the Strictly final or an England defeat? Don’t we become more interesting by doing our own thing? After all, we’re tribal with our music tastes, why shouldn’t we be with our TV? My argument would be that some common ground is a good thing. Music has always has been the thing that’s made us different, but television’s been the thing that kept us the same. In an era of limited choice, 30 million people once sat down to watch Morecambe and Wise’s Christmas special. Isn’t it remarkable that a whole cross-section of society united in laughter? At a time of political divide there was still cultural togetherness. Now in today’s era of isolationism, we’re culturally separated too. So many of our opinions are becoming ghettoised online because there’s no one to collaborate with in the physical world – isn’t this a bit sad?

Laughing all the way to viewing figures.

The reason I’m banging on about this is because over the last eight weeks there’s been a television drama that has got people talking – and not just online. Yes, people have using their actual mouths to do something other than eat. Up and down the country millions have been watching something that isn’t reality television or sport; but a sharp, intelligent written drama. Perhaps only Broadchurch can say that it has captured the nation in the same way The Missing has (and that show went so far off the boil in Series 2 it’s debatable whether the hob was ever on). For The Missing to retain its viewers over eight episodes and create weekly talking points is such an impressive achievement. Yes, Victoria had better ratings this year, but no one around the country was theorising on its plot developments.

The Missing, if you’re uninitiated, is a drama that centres on child abduction and the investigation that follows. In the first series, the procedural oscillated between two frames, 2006 and 2014, to tell the story of a missing boy. From the start, the programme grabbed us by the throat and refused to relinquish its hold. Seeing a father’s realisation that his son was missing is agonising in the extreme. Witnessing then his hunt to find his child is an obsession that we the viewer comes to share. For all of that though, the last episode was a bitter disappointment with the denouement lacking conviction and commitment. Writers Jack and Harry Williams, inveterate Twitter users, admitted they had read the backlash and vowed to be more conclusive and emphatic in their second series.

The Williams brothers.

The second series of The Missing is more ambitious than the first, straddling four key time frames. Also, whilst the first series criss–crossed the channel taking in France and England; the second goes further taking on Bond-esque proportions by traversing multiple countries. Initially, this is a little bewildering and in lesser hands it could prove jarring; however the Williams brothers handle it with aplomb, negotiating the time shifts with excellent clutch control.   

This series centres on Alice Webster, a young British schoolgirl, who goes missing in a German army town. Eleven years later, she collapses back to her home city nursing abdominal pains. When she is reunited with her family they cannot believe their eyes. Sam, a Captain in the local base, is overcome with emotion; his blessed daughter has returned. Gemma, a teacher, is similarly overwhelmed: how incredible to have her baby back. In time though she becomes confused, doubting whether this girl is really her girl. When erudite detective Julien Baptiste appears to raise his suspicions, the incredulity she feels only deepens. Baptiste believes the girl is another missing person, Sophie Giroux, a girl who went missing in France. But why would she lie about being someone else? When questioned by Brigadier Adrian Stone, she seems prompted to give up the name of a local butcher as her abductee. Is Stone complicit in the lie? Why would a Gulf War veteran want to ‘fit’ another person with a crime? Alice Webster may have gone missing in a small German town but the origins of this disappearance tale dates back to Britain’s involvement in Iraq. Just like The Killing, the Danish crime drama that must have inspired the show, series two gets behind enemy lines and uncovers the secret tunnels of corrupt morality.

Stone and 'Webster.'

Touching on The Killing, I have to say one of the things I most enjoyed about the show was recognising its reference points. When ‘Alice’ first returns it’s redolent of French zombie-drama, The Returned: her icy demeanour similar to the undead that populated the show. With Baptiste on the receiving end of a tumour, he begins to resemble Breaking Bad’s Walter White, physically in appearance and mentally in desperation. Further, the idea that the Websters may have taken in a fraud may seem absurd, but if you watch The Imposter, as I’m sure the writers have, then you will see that it isn’t so far-fetched. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘Good writers, borrow; great writers, steal.’

Walter White/ Julien Baptiste

The Williams brothers in taking from the best have produced this year’s great art heist. Now let’s get off our laptops and start talking about it.

The Missing is now available on DVD.