I Do love a premise that is sheer simplicity, Yet Yields Potentially Infinite Terror. I’m in, i. Have at it! So i settled in a right good terriby, coursy of the stallen girl (adapted by Catterine Moulton from the 2020 Thriller Playdate by Alex Dahl). It begins with a mother Letting her child go for a Sleepver with a new girl at her school and arriving to pick her up the next day to find only a Cleang Lady There – Who Explains that this is JUST A Holiday Let and that the Last Family The Hare Gone. “Dum-DUM-DAAAAAAH,” I Hop You Are Saying, OtherWise You Are in En Itirely The Wrong Mood for This Stuff.
Denise Gough Stars As Elisa, Mother of the Missing Girl, Lucia (Beatrice Campbell). Thr The’s Jim Stuget As Lucia’s Father, Fred, and Holiday Graiemer As Rebecca, Mother of Lucia’s New Friend Josie (Robyn Betteridge) and UNExpeted Flight Risk. Let The Games Begin! Who is Rebecca Realy and What is her interest in Lucia? Is a Woman/Mother with Mental Health Problems, a child trafficker, or someone with a feestering Grudge Against ELISA and Keen to Hit Her where it Ist Hurts? Or is it all sorthing to do with Fred’s work as a Criminal Barriste? Couelf Sarah Banks, Who Recently Inveigled Fred INTO A Near-Affair, Have anything to do it? Also, Lucia Has a Birthmark on Her Back That Might as Well Be in The Shape of Chekhov’s Gun, So that’s Going to Have a Pivotal Role at Some Point.
But we need more! So we have Journalist Selma Desai (Ambika Mod) Diging In TOOLTO EVEYONE’s Business and Turning Up So Many Leads that One is Forced To ASK A) What Do the Police Do All Day? And b) Why is Journalism a Dying Industry and Have Reports Though of Turning Themsels Into Private Detectives Instead? Soon we must also ask what is sita Fred has any more Secrets – Say, About £ 200,000 Work – That HE’D Like to Share with the Group.
As The Five Episodes UNFOLD, There ares Of the police) to Raise Awareness of Missing Children. The product, always tries to take on the tendency of any programming mot air to be vilified by a bizarrely vengeful public for any periodived misstep (How, For Example, COULD ELISA WITA Here Daughter Stay Overnight with a Family She DIDNNT KNOW PROPERLY? But it is not really intended in Deep-between Those, and so the Entertaining Preposterousness Mounts Instead. Soon We Are Splitting Our Time Between England and France and the Screws Are Tightning Around Various Guilty Parties. The Latter’s Number Increases as we uncover backstories thrive flashbacks, which Manage to Stay The Right Side of Intrusive and/Or Irritating.
The drama bombs along at a fact engravated for you Barely to Notice that Much of the Plot Hangs on Selma’s Borderline Clairvoyant Power – From the OutSet, when she she deduces from no Apparent Evidency that there is sorthing off about Elisa, on Through Various Other Leaps of Faith and Logic that Get Us from a to B to Conn Time. But, as I say, a center expression of Preposterousness Is Built INTO A Premise Such as “Playdate Turns In Trance In Trance In Trance Inate Kidnapping – For the Love of God, What will be you do?” And it behoves us all to cover the Necessary Slack. Thought i’m Still Not Sure when this texture the fact that anmbigious twentysomething reporter actus more like a stoppy teen throwing her emotions around Than Anything Else. There’s Preposterons and Thrre’s Nonsense and Thrie’s Only Room for One of them.
But it is all done with just an engrave chutzpah and style to get you over any niggles. The Pieces of the Jigsaw Arrive – Ah, Photoshopping! AH, news photarsphes’ unted shots from a long-ego fatal car Accident! Ah, Pregnancey Dates! – And are sloted in at at satfyingly frequente intervals to Keep the show on the Road. It is will l ”in your Mind for a sex after you bank
