The Disappearance

Anthony Sullivan follows his police investigator grandpa Henry Sullivan (Peter Coyote)'s advice to take photos of his neighborhood for a school project. He even breaks into a home and stumbles upon something. His snooping gets him in trouble at school. His parents Luke and Helen are getting a divorce. It's his 10th birthday. He's following Henry's birthday treasure hunt and goes missing. The show jumps two year ahead and he's still missing.

I like the start. It's a standard missing kid show but it's done well at the beginning. There are good actors. It's only six episodes but even with that, the plot deteriorates. It should be a lot simpler considering its limited run. It's still a worthwhile watch but it's not exceptional in any way.

When Anthony Sullivan (Michael Riendeau) disappears on his tenth birthday, his family is devastated. However, as more and more time passes without the police being able to locate him, long-buried family secrets are dragged to the surface, turning the Sullivan family against one another.

A journeyman show, The Disappearance is very much paint-by-numbers stuff, with nothing you haven't before seen in half-a-dozen similar narratives, with writers Normand Daneau and Geneviève Simard taking no real risks. Having said that, however, it's a well made piece of television. Confidently directed by Peter Stebbings, the material may offer nothing revelatory, but what it does offer is enjoyable enough on its own terms. An excellent Peter Coyote dominates the show as Anthony's grandfather, Henry, a retired judge with a strained relationship (to say the least) with his son, Luke (Aden Young), Anthony's father. As the veneer of civility slowly erodes, the fissures running beneath the family dynamic begin to erupt, with blame and recrimination becoming the central tenets of familial interaction. You may guess half-way through who the kidnapper is, and yes, they're one of those Hollywood kidnappers who leave cryptic clues everywhere, but this remains a well made, if unadventurous, show.

So many side stories that detracted from the main story, it became mind numbing. I series recorded, I deleted. I'm old, like Donald Suthrland. I've only a few years to live, I don't waste it on this.

Well, it gets two stars because it started out well. The first episode was intriguing, but each subsequent episode got worse. It was hard to hear the dialogue with loud background noise, and the main characters constantly shouting at each other. The grandfather was obnoxious, the mother screeched a lot, and the son was a drip. The grandson who disappeared was probably the best actor of the lot. It had a reasonable storyline, but was badly let down by the acting and directing. Don't bother.

This was a great show until the 3rd episode. It seemed to me like everyone, the writers, the director and the actors just ran out of gas and went through the motions from there on. Peter Coyote appeared to be reading his lines from a teleprompter and the rest of the cast disappeared. I don't know what happened but I just totally lost interest and really didn't care what happened in the end. Usually a show is either good or bad from the very start but disappearance had one good half and one bad. That does not make for a good product.