Simple truth that makes The Missing unmissable

It’s a moment every parent has experienced. One minute, your child is standing next to you while you’re out and about. The next they’re gone.

That heart-pounding feeling of dread and fear is thankfully almost always short-lived, as your wee darling is nearly always found moments later. But child abduction is a fear every parent lives with on some level. Which is partly why Beeb drama The Missing, starring James Nesbitt, is so compulsive.

Little Oliver Hughes disappears while on a family holiday in France while with dad Tony in 2006. In the seconds Tony is distracted in a busy bar, Olly vanishes. And so begins the complex, complicated but always

compelling drama, as the action switches from 2006 to the present day.

You couldn’t call it fun viewing. In fact, it’s relentlessly foreboding and for some, it will be just too distressing to watch. But the whole thing is so well-acted and written and has so many twists and turns most of us can’t tear ourselves away.

It can be confusing. There are so many characters who are potential suspects including Tony and ex-wife Emily that there are times you’re left scratching your head and wondering what’s going on. Type #themissingconfused into Twitter and you’ll find a heap of people asking for help unravelling the plot.

But it keeps us coming back for more and word-of-mouth recommendations are obviously having an effect because last week’s episode recorded a series high of almost six million viewers. That particular episode saw the action really hotting up as (spoiler alert) Tony was taken in for questioning and it emerged he had a violent background.

He soon proved that violence wasn’t completely in the past when he went round to suspect Vincent Bourg’s house and duffed him up, cutting his hand in the process which may well prove vital in the coming instalments.

The supporting cast is fantastic, although if you want to get picky you could argue the hard-nosed journalist Malik Suri is a bit of a clich.

But this is James Nesbitt’s moment of glory. As dad Tony, you can actually feel his frustration as he comes up against brick walls and has his hopes dashed time and again.

It’s one of the few dramas where you have a physical reaction watching it from a knot in your stomach to a pounding heart when there’s a particularly tense moment.

Like any good thriller, The Missing knows the value of a good cliffhanger, too.

I can’t be the only one who rewound the closing moments of Tuesday’s episode just to make sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was a tantalising glimpse of Olly, screaming at a window, before being whisked away.

We’re left with many unanswered questions and potential suspects.