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Writer George Kay certainly knows his way around a mystery. The success of his Netflix series “Lupin” and his Apple TV drama “Hijack” (especially the first season) have well proven his abilities. With his latest crime drama, BritBox’s “Gone,” loosely inspired by Julie Mackay and Robert Murphy’s true crime novel, “To Hunt A Killer,” Kay further proves that he has mastered suspense and the art of building tension. Though it starts as a mystery drama, “Gone” slowly unfurls, becoming a tale about obsession, emotional ineptness and the horrific things men do when they aren’t given what they want.
“Gone” is set in Bristol, England, and begins at a rugby match for the prestigious St. Bartholomew private school. As his team scores the winning goal, St. Bartholomew headmaster and coach Michael Polly (a haunting David Morrissey) looks over the field stiff and stonefaced. Despite the joyous celebration happening in front of him, he never even cracks a smile. When the match ends, Michael and his 25-year-old daughter, Alana (Emma Appleton), who is also a teacher at St. Bartholomew, head home after he berates star player Dylan Sedgwick (Billy Barratt) for what he deems unsporting behavior. For decades, they’ve lived on school grounds in the home allotted for the headmaster and his family.
Yet this isn’t a normal evening. Though her reading glasses and a cold cup of tea sit in her office, Michael’s wife Sarah (Hollie Bailey), a music teacher, is nowhere to be found. Her phone continuously goes to voicemail. When she still hasn’t turned up the next morning, Alana panics and urges her father to report her mother missing. Detective Sargents Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles) and Becky Hammond (Jennifer Macbeth) first encounter Michael when he arrives at the Redland Police Station to inform them of Sarah’s disappearance. Though the frigid headmaster answers their questions about his wife and his own timeline without flair, his demeanor immediately puts Annie on edge. It’s clear Michael is hiding something.
Not wanting to raise the alarm yet, Annie and Becky label Sarah as a low-risk missing person and head to St. Barths to begin a more formal interview process with Michael and Alana. Before she can fully untangle Sarah’s disappearance, Annie is forced into a new role as the family’s liaison, watching father and daughter around the clock while trying to piece together what may have happened to Sarah. As the hours tick away, Alana continues to emotionally unravel while Michael retreats inward, stonewalling law enforcement and his staff and pressing forward with life as usual.
Despite being relegated to the duty of glorified babysitter, Annie starts to put together a portrait of the Pollys. She quickly understands that the image projected to others is very different from the truth of who they really are. Because their lives are so deeply embedded in the school, other things also come into focus, including the tension between Michael and Dylan and the secret romance Alana is having with fellow professor Paul Whitchurch (Nicholas Nunn). Meanwhile, though Annie feels sidelined on the case, she is not at the top of her game. A missing friend’s 20-year-old cold case continues to haunt her, and she’s distracted by her estranged husband, Detective Inspector Craig Stanhope’s (Peter McDonald) reemergence in her life. Though he’s showing signs that he’s just as volatile as he always was, Annie can’t seem to resist rekindling their romance.
In just six episodes, “Gone” reaches a resolution, and the audience finds out what happened to Sarah Polly. But the series is careful to cast suspicions in a multitude of directions, not merely at Michael but at several people in Sarah’s orbit who only reveal themselves when backed into corners. Bombshells are exposed bit by bit, and the pacing keeps viewers holding their breath for most of the show. As Annie gets closer to the truth, she realizes violence often has many different faces, and typically the more insidious it is, the more horrific the outcome.
The first three episodes of “Gone” debut July 23 on BritBox, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Thursdays.
English (US) ·