The Missing offers gripping drama on every level

TV Watch with Dave O’Connell

The best of drama makes you enter their world – but the world of Tony and Emily Hughes is one you’d take hell ahead of. They’re the parents in The Missing, the new eight-part BBC 1 drama on Tuesday nights that, on the surface, chronicles a family’s trauma after their young and only son is snatched while the three of them were on holiday in France.

But testimony to its powerful writing and direction, it is also the story of a marriage – and more precisely, a husband – unraveling with loss, guilt and anger closing in, all in equal measure.

Tony Hughes is played by James Nesbitt, and he is truly outstanding in a role that could easily have descended into the mawkish in lesser hands.

The Hughes are on holiday in France (although this is actually filmed in Brussels and around Belgium) with their five year old, Olly, when their car breaks down and they have to spend the night in a little village called Chalons du Bois while their car gets fixed.

All of this occurs during the 2006 World Cup and to keep young Olly entertained during the delay, his dad brings him swimming at a nearby hotel and leisure complex.

And afterwards, as France are winning the World Cup Final against Brazil on the telly, they go to the packed bar for a lemonade – only for Olly to disappear in the blink of an eye.

The dawning realisation of what has happened is the most powerful moment of the opening episode, as Tony dashes around like a headless chicken, shouting, screaming, moaning and almost drowning in his own grief.

It’s a feeling we’ve all had – if only for a minute – when one of the kids wanders off in town or in the shop….only this time Olly isn’t coming back.

And so begins the Hughes’ descent into hell on earth – eight years on, you can see the full effect of the damage with the family in pieces and Tony, the once-normal, happy-go-lucky dad now a shattered wreck who cannot let go of the past.

It’s because, of course, he feels responsible for Oliver’s disappearance and becomes completely consumed with locating his son.

Emily (Frances O’Connor) seems at first to have moved on with her life – ending up with Mark, the British liaison office who was dealing with the family in France and then ends up with the wife.

But Tony’s insistence that he has a new lead shows Emily how tenuous this new existence really is, and she too finds herself pulled back into the nightmare.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.