In the first season of Starz’ under-the-radar quasi-anthology “The Missing,” James Nesbitt rips his heart open — and ours, too — as the guilt-ravaged British father obsessed with the disappearance of his son on his watch during a vacation in France.
Season two returns Sunday night, with returning co-star Tcheky Karyo as detective Julien Baptiste as the bridge between that story and this new one, about the sudden appearance of a haunted girl believed to be Alice Webster (Abigail Hardingham), who went missing a decade before from a British military base in a small German village.
There is nothing here that matches Nesbitt’s tour de force, but this season is less a character study than an incredibly Byzantine mystery, with twists upon twists and murky motivations that span decades and cross continents. (A BBC production, it also doesn’t beat you about the head and shoulders with its own craftiness like many American mysteries are prone to do.) “The Missing” is a feast — albeit the most chilly, emotionally devastating feast ever — for armchair sleuths.
The distinctive structure of “The Missing” remains intact — the story is told in multiple time frames, mostly in the immediate aftermath of Alice’s reappearance in 2014 and two years later, with glaring changes that raise even more questions than the central one: Who kidnapped Alice, and what happened to another missing girl she claims was held captive with her?
David Morrissey (the Governor from “The Walking Dead”) and Keely Hawes in particular are excellent as Alice’s parents, boomeranging from grief to elation to suspicion to guilt, as is Laura Fraser (the tightly-wound Stevia-loving Lydia Rodarte-Quayle of “Breaking Bad”), as the military investigator who becomes intimately involved with the family. But it’s the dogged Baptiste who drives the story this time. He investigated the disappearance of the other girl, Sophie Giroux, and inserts himself into Alice’s case, practically to the point of harassment.
When we pick up two years later, he is retired and racing against a cancer diagnosis and in … Iraq? His detecting is still a bit too uncanny, his timing a little too perfect, the coincidences a little too … coincidental, but you’ll be so busy keeping up with the plot maneuvers and revelations you won’t have time to nitpick.
Starz made the entire season available to TV critics, and I binged on the 8-episode season in a little over a day. But it didn’t resonate with me as much as the first season did. As one character caught up in the investigation says, “One day, you’ll see, this will just be a terrible story that we tell.”
Grade: A-
Season two of “The Missing” premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. Starz will make the entire season available to stream online or via its app after the premiere Sunday night.
Vicki Hyman may be reached at vhyman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickihy or like her on Facebook. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook, and check out Remote Possibilities, the TV podcast from Vicki Hyman and co-host Erin Medley on iTunes, Stitcher or Spreaker, or listen below or here.
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