Credit the writers and the director--and the various wonderful acting performances you’ll see sprinkled about--for making The Missing something more than just a whodunit.
The Missing, an eight-hour thriller coming to Starz on Saturday, is so tantalizing and haunting that it qualifies as a must-see, even for viewers who might be suffering from serial crime fatigue.
There have been an awful lot of movies and shows about lost children, but The Missing elevates the familiar dynamic to a new level with a gut wrenching mystery. By the end of the first episode, you really want to know what happened to the tyke while dreading where the answer might take you.
The Missing, written by brothers Harry and Jack Williams and directed by Tom Shankland, is sometimes grueling to watch. But it earns a place in haunting crime drama next to the recent “Broadchurch” and “Top of the Lake.”
Its somewhat opaque characters never quite moved me on that level [of "Broadchurch," "Happy Valley" or "Top of the Lake"]. Though it's well made and respectful of its subject matter, something about this show keeps it not at the surface but more or less reliably near it.