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The Missing was me early into the first series as I really couldn’t get into it, but I was given the gist of it, and series two sees Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) back, and the family affected this time, is led by army man Sam Webster (David Morrissey) and his teacher wife Gemma (Keeley Hawes), and the twist this time is tha rather than their child being taken, their daughter, Alice (Abigail Hardingham) has been missing for eleven years, and has just been found.
The opening episode did a brilliant job of mixing together the then and the now (well, 2003 and 2014), as Alice is seen both being taken, then later found in Eckhausen, Germany, in the latter situation looking like she’s been ten rounds with Tyson Fury. On her return, when asked for a name of someone they could contact on her behalf, she told them Sophie Giroux, the girl in a missing persons case previously led by the now-retired Baptiste.
Does the return of Alice mean the eventual return of Sophie? That’s the lead Baptiste took forward, as he headed off to Kirkuk, Iraqi Kurdistan (or whatever location stood in for that), while Sam and Gemma tried to fill in the gaps in the intervening years. For them, their time in this episode felt like a retread of Thirteen, while for Baptiste, following the cliched situation that he was dragged back to a cold case which he must know better than anyone, I was waiting for him to come over all ‘Henry V’ and shout, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends!”
Things took an intriguing turn which made me look forward to finding out more, and you can see that it’s essential that it goes between 2014 and 2016 – despite that being a much shorter period than 2003 to 2014, but ultimately, this first episode left me with more questions than answers, and wishing that it was a two-hour opener to fully get a handle on things, and it certainly has a decent supporting cast including Laura Fraser (One Of Us), Olafur Darri Olafsson (Trapped) and Roger Allam (The Truth Commissioner, The Thick Of It).
The Missing Series 2 is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD, plus a Series 1 & 2 Blu-ray boxset and Series 1 & 2 DVD boxset, all ahead of their release on December 26th, and the episode is available to watch on BBC iPlayer until November 11th. Also, click on the packshot for the full-size version.
Episode 1 Score: 6/10
Director: Ben Chanan
Producer: Julian Stevens
Writers: Harry Williams and Jack Williams
Julien Baptiste: Tchéky Karyo
Sam Webster: David Morrissey
Gemma Webster: Keeley Hawes
Alice Webster: Abigail Hardingham
Eve Stone: Laura Fraser
Brigadier Adrian Stone: Roger Allam
Celia Baptiste: Anastasia Hille
Nadia Herz: Lia Williams
Matthew Webster: Jake Davies
Jorn Lenhart: Florian Bartholomai
Stefan Andersson: Olafur Darri Olafsson
Adam Gettrick: Derek Riddell
Daniel Reed: Daniel Ezra
Sara Baptiste: Camille Schotte
Pol Dir Engel: Bernhard Schutz
Ulf Twin: Tobias Schonenberg
Axel Twin: Stefan Schonenberg
Alice (11): Madi Linnard
Matthew (9): Oaklee Pendergast
Karla Becker: Isabelle Barth
Bagir: Imran Yusuf
Rudi: Jonathan Sawdon
Yardil Askari: Ricky Sekhon
Captain Leeson: Duncan Lumsden
Paramedic: Sura Dohnke
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.