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The chilling kidnap anthology “The Missing” continues to be the stuff of a parent’s worst nightmare in its second stand-alone season on Starz.
In fact, the agonizing heartbreak and shocking twists in these eight episodes could be characterized as even more intense and disturbing than the previous Emmy-nominated season, which aired in 2014.
The performances, led by two of Britain’s finest, David Morissey (“The Walking Dead”) and Keeley Hawes (“The Durrells in Corfu”) as a victimized girl’s mom and dad, are powerful. Don’t be surprised if they invade your dreams as they did mine.
Season two of “The Missing” debuts at 7 p.m. Sunday.
Once again written by brothers Jack and Harry Williams, the limited series grabs the viewer almost instantly.
A pale, ravaged young British woman (the unforgettable Abigail Hardingham) — her dark-rimmed eyes haunted, her lips painfully chapped — stumbles through the streets of her hometown in Germany and collapses.
She identifies herself as Alice Webster, who went missing as a young school girl 11 years prior.
Alice’s return sends shockwaves through the small community of Eckhausen, especially when it is revealed that she may hold vital clues to the whereabouts of another missing girl, Sophie.
Her father and mother are horrified when it’s revealed their daughter not only had been repeatedly raped by her captor, but had given birth to a child.
However, Alice’s own mom senses something isn’t quite right once this grown-up version is back home. As Gemma (Hawes) struggles to get to know her child again, Alice says and does things that spawn doubt, causing Mom to wonder: Is this really her daughter?
The unrest that ensues starts to drive a wedge between her and husband Sam (Morrissey), who can’t fathom that the returned girl is anyone but Alice.
It’s also the beginning of a downward spiral of drugs and violence for Alice’s introverted brother Matthew (Jack Davies). The troubled young man has never been able to shake the guilt of having been the last person to see his sister before she was abducted. After her return, he is once again made to feel culpable in a horrific turn of events that creates a bitter animosity between him and his father.
Told simultaneously over three time frames, the series shows how events stemming from Alice’s return hurl the family into a turmoil that threatens to irrevocably tear them apart.
Meanwhile, French detective Julien Baptiste is fiercely determined to solve this convoluted case, which takes him to Germany and as far away as Iraq. He snubs retirement, battles illness and upsets his own wife and daughter to doggedly unravel a grisly conspiracy that holds the key not only to what happened to Alice, but another missing child case he never let die.
Baptiste is the one element of this new round that ties it to the anthology’s previous season. He’s driven and meticulous, as well as charismatic, and may be my favorite fictional gumshoe since Hercule Poirot.
Played by the wonderful Tchéky Karyo, this detective is grittier, more grounded and less comically eccentric than Agatha Christie’s Belgian creation.
Still, Baptiste does make us smile at times with his well-placed wit. As he tries to get a resourceful young German police officer named Jorn to let him tag along in his pursuit of the Webster case, Baptiste shares a saying: “If everyone helps to hold up the sky, then one person does not become tired.”
Charmed, Jorn presses Baptiste on the origin of the quote. Displeased by how much the younger generation depends on the Internet, Baptiste teases: “Google it!”
Yes, “The Missing” not only is a gripping, harrowing and thoroughly addictive puzzle of twists and turns, it’s also entertaining — dramatic television at its finest.
Jeanne Jakle’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays in mySA.
jjakle@express-news.net
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