http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/arts/television/the-missing-on-starz-8-year-odyssey-to-solve-a-mystery.html 2014-11-14 01:14:47 ‘The Missing,’ on Starz: 8-Year Odyssey to Solve a Mystery In “the Missing,” a Starz mini-series, a 5-year-old’s disappearance leads to years of secrecy and deceit. === What is the worst thing that could happen? Parents always have an answer to that question. Nothing is as bad as a murdered or missing child. That’s why novels, movies and television so often re-enact the nightmare. “ There’s a certain kind of show about a certain kind of crime that allows viewers to feel that by going over every repressed memory, every suspicious encounter and every shade of parental grief in a make-believe tragedy, they will surely prevent it from happening in real life. Over an eight-episode arc, the story unfolds in two alternating time frames, switching from the disappearance in 2006 and ensuing investigation to what happens eight years later after a clue surfaces and reopens the case. There have been other productions with the same theme and very similar titles, like the 2003 movie “The Missing,” starring Cate Blanchett as a mother hunting for her abducted daughter. Even the tone and structure of the Starz series is familiar: What begins as a wrenching but contained tragedy ripples out into widening and intersecting circles of secrecy and deceit. It’s a formula used not just in television and movies but also novels by Richard Price and Tana French. But “The Missing” is imaginatively written, well cast, chillingly believable and quite addictive. This kind of story has been told this way before, but somehow that doesn’t make this telling any less compelling. Tony Hughes ( Several actors are French, and some of the dialogue is in French, but it’s a British-made series. And that’s not surprising: These kinds of grim, austere dramas are more commonly British and Scandinavian. It’s rare for an American network to create a series about a dead child; more often, it’s either campy (“Twin Peaks”) or imported. “The Killing” was an Americanized version of the Danish series “Forbrydelsen,” and “ It could be that American producers aren’t as tough — or callous — as their European counterparts. Or it may just be that American audiences are softer, accustomed to the conventions of broadcast networks, which favor comic relief and happy endings. The most awful crimes against children mostly take place on procedurals like “Law & Order: SVU” or “Criminal Minds,” where the spotlight is on the recurring characters, and even the most unspeakable crimes are solved or resolved by episode’s end. When it began on AMC in 2011, some complained that the American version of “ Julien Baptiste (Tcheky Karyo), the French detective who led the investigation in 2006, has retired and taken up beekeeping as a hobby, but is dragged back into the pursuit by Tony. Julien is one of the unexpected pleasures of “The Missing,” a courteous, soft-spoken man who doesn’t fit anyone’s image of a homicide detective, but who has gentle powers of observation and persuasion and a few hidden demons of his own. Julien is a good foil to Tony, who is graceless, deracinated and, most of all, obsessed. Julien is patient with Tony, but he is almost the only one. The French residents and officials who were so compassionate and solicitous in the immediate aftermath of Olly’s abduction have hardened over the years, resentful about the lingering stigma the child’s disappearance has left on the town and its tourism business. Reporters don’t treat Tony very gently either. Malik Suri (Arsher Ali), an aspiring journalist, is particularly unpleasant and ruthless in his quest for sensational scoops. There are exceptions, including Laurence Relaud (Émilie Dequenne), a sweet-natured police officer who speaks English and was one of the first to help Tony and Emily, and Mark Walsh (Jason Flemyng) a British detective who steps in as a liaison officer with the French authorities, though he speaks no French. Kindness doesn’t make things better for these parents, of course, and cruelty can’t really make their lot any worse. Even the truth brings little comfort. It’s the audience that wins by trying to imagine an unimaginable loss.