Rent The Missing: Series 1 (2014)

Not bad - covers some uncomfortable topics rather well - The Missing: Series 1 review by RP

It's a drama about a couple whose 6-year-old son goes missing while they're on holiday in France during the 2006 World Cup. In the course of 8 x 1 hour episodes using flashback and flash-forward between 2006, 2009 and the present day (well, 2014) the hunt for the missing child is explored through the eyes of the parents, and principally the father played by James Nesbitt as he never gives up hope of finding his son again.

With the whole gamut of emotions from despair through to rage, and covering some uncomfortable topics from child abduction, trafficking and paedophilia, drug abuse, police and judicial corruption, murder, stress, loss of trust and marriage break-up, the drama would test the best of both film makers and actors. And as might be expected there are some successes and failures.

The series is slow moving and thorough, exploring many uncomfortable corners of human life. Generally it feels believable - but there is a major let-down in the final episode where there is a too-rapid tidying up of loose ends, followed by an ambiguous ending.

Unfortunately for me I have always found James Nesbitt to be a 'wooden' actor - in some scenes that is an advantage as his internal turmoil is hidden, but for the most part his acting hides the emotional despair that any parent would feel. The mother is played by Frances O'Connor who is more believable. And then there are a series of characters who speak with a mix of genuine and bogus France accents, and one rather good portrayal by Arsher Ali of the thoroughly odious, manipulative journalist Malik Suri. [Aside: there is even a bit of leaping-on-the-bandwagon here, as he goes in for a minor bit of mobile phone voicemail 'hacking'].

I enjoyed it (if one can 'enjoy' a drama about such uncomfortable topics) but with some reservations. I'll give it 4/5 stars.