Disparue

This eight-part French remake of an earlier Spanish TV series became the latest sub-titled fix of my wife and I. After a succession of Nordic Noir programmes, this Lyons-set mystery thriller made for an effective change of pace and kept us gripped until the end. Centring around the disappearance of an apparently captivating 17 year old girl after she attends an outdoor pop concert on her birthday, what follows is part police-procedural, part whodunnit and part examination of the effects of grief and loss on individual family and friends connected to the girl.

Unsurprisingly, over eight one-hour episodes, other murders follow, but there is thankfully no serial-killer excess, with a plausible explanation for the subsequent deaths and a reasonable twist at the end, where my previously smug and apparently accurate selection of the killer was controverted, at least somewhat, by the concluding events.

Unlike the familiar Swedish - Danish shows of late, the style here is less dark and oppressive. There is an identifiable French take on events, from much of the action centring on the family restaurant to the seemingly national trait of infidelity with almost every adult character having affairs outside of their established relationships.

The main focus is on the pressures which overtake the marriage of the mother and father of the deceased Lea, the husband who becomes obsessed with finding the killer, harassing the pursuing detective team and setting up his own incident room in his cellar while his wife bottles up her emotions as she tries to keep her family together and marriage intact.

My only gripes would be that I found it hard to accept that a young girl like Lea could beguile so many men, both young and old, as she apparently does, plus I'm not certain the police would actually tolerate the seemingly ever-present attention of the crazed husband-father. Nevertheless, unshowily but effectively directed and excellently acted by almost every cast member, this was an intensely good production from start to finish.

Was hooked from the first episode. Then found out it was actually a remake of a 2008 Spanish TV series set in Madrid and that won many awards. Would love to watch the original in Spanish now!

Had me hooked from start to finish! Great cast. Just wish my French was better!

Nordic crime mystery-thriller stuff one of my favorites when it comes to genres. It's interesting to see another country attempt to copy the formula, especially when it isn't a remake.

While "The Disappearance" isn't a remake, it is definitely a copy. A girl disappears, then the carousel of suspect family members and acquaintances. They each take their turn in custody and interrogation while those waiting their turn to be brought in express suspicion of those currently being questioned. Hints that the primary investigator has something in his past that he'd rather not talk about. Lots of borrowed plot elements.

The carousel-recipe, regardless of country, isn't my favorite. It's almost lazy writing, as it could be anyone — just depends on when the carousel stops. When it does stop, a backstory explaining guilt is abruptly created. I prefer the genre variation where the viewer is shown the perpetrator early on and the story that unfolds is how they are found out.

"Disparue" would be great if it were the first of a kind — but at this point it's been done over and over, and often better, in other countries. "Bron/Broen" and the UK "Broadchurch" are examples of 'better'. That being said, "The Disappearance" is engagingly watchable while waiting for the next addictive Nordic Noir crime thriller to come out.

From 'Twin Peaks' to 'The Killing', we're all familiar with the basic template of 'The Disappearance': an attractive but apparently ordinary teenage girl suffers a grim fate, and the detectives have to understand her dark secrets to figure this out. Cue lots of grieving relatives, red herrings and nasty surprises in an extended format. Some series of this sort are even rather good, but 'The Disapperance' will not be joining my list of favourites. Somehow the characters just don't come individually to life, perhaps in part because everyone is beautiful. And a lot of the plot seems to hang upon the girl's father conducting a shadow of the police investigation in a way I found scarcely credible. Finally, the red herrings are all ultimately revealed to be just that, completely unrelated to the crux of the story. Perhaps the problem is simply that the story isn't sufficient interesting to sustain eight episodes. 'The Killing' had a political dimension whereas 'Twin Peaks' soon went off in its own, original direction. Without any novelty, 'The Disappearance', while nicely put together, lacks any elements to lift it above its genre.