Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Inmechon The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Murray Morison A complex story certainly. The twists and turns take you across decades with much of the story told in flashback. A girl has gone missing. A young detective takes on his first case with national notoriety. He is up against prejudice in his own police station being the only copper with a university background. His prime suspect is a man with real power and considerable arrogance. 40 years later a journalist (played masterfully by Juliet Stevenson) revisits the case and wonders if there was a miscarriage of justice. This production has done remarkable justice to a highly complex plot. The final hour of the three hour mini-series had me on the edge of my seat throughout. A very high quality drama and one that deserves to be seen.

GilBlas The story is that of a teenage girl from a rural village who went missing while walking her dog on the moors. Her body was never found but evidence that she had been kidnapped and murdered was, as was evidence that her stepfather was responsible. Based on that evidence, and despite the absence of the girl's body, her stepfather was convicted and hanged. Fast- forward forty years to the present, when filmmaker Catherine Heathcote is reexamining the crime in a documentary for TV. As the deadline for wrapping up her film nears, a key figure in the documentary, George Bennett, the then-young lead detective in the original investigation, whose career was launched by the case, reverses his decision to discuss the case on camera. Bennett is clearly troubled by the case, and he tells Heathcote vaguely "mistakes were made." Heathcote's request of her boss for more time, so she can pin down the truth, is rewarded by his pulling her from the film and replacing her with an ambitious assistant whose orders are to meet the deadline. Something was clearly amiss with the original investigation, but what? Heathcote presses ahead on her own to find out.While I had a sense of what was troubling George Bennett, and the direction the story was heading, the film was effective in keeping me guessing at the details until nearly the end. It did so, however, in large part because of the improbability of its resolution. Now, I don't wish to exaggerate this point: I have encountered stories and resolutions that I found equally, if not more, improbable in any number of episodes of highly-regarded British mystery series. (Pushing the improbability envelope seems to be the norm in mystery/police-procedural dramas these days.)In summary, the quality of the production is high, and the story will hold your interest. The acting is first-rate: Juliet Stevenson is always good, and the actors who play Bennett and his partner as young men are well matched physically to the two who play them as old men (I found this to be more effective than aging the young actors with makeup). The journey to the story's resolution is satisfying even if the resolution itself is not completely so.

glilley At the beginning of the first episode, the mother of the missing girl says her last words to her were; "Hi mum, bye mum". This use of American slang is quite a recent affectation and would have been unthinkable in early-sixties England and certainly in rural areas anyway. I know this because I grew up there at that very time. However, this is all-in- all a very gripping and absorbing thriller, as long as you can overlook some of the stock elements and red herrings that make it resemble the formula style of "Inspector Morse" episodes. The main drawback for some may be the fact that the chilling twist at the end may be looked on as somewhat implausible. Good performances though by a twin bank of actors playing the main protagonists both then and now as the action shifts back and forth from the original investigation to the making of a current documentary.

brice-18 What a pity that Robert Hanks' callow review of the first episode is the only external assessment of this gripping thriller. I must confess, though, that when I saw it on TV I couldn't follow it - the simultaneous plots in past and present puzzled me, or perhaps I was 'as tired as a newt'! Anyway,I was sufficiently intrigued to get the DVD,and I'm so glad I did. Juliet Stevenson, too often under cast these days, is at her brilliant best as the dedicated TV reporter, 'crap mother' Catherine Heathcote, investigating the disappearance of 13-year old Alison Carter some 50 years ago. Elizabeth Day is so good as her troubled, overlooked daughter Saha, while Liz Moscrop as Catherine's novelist mother shows how Catherine was comparably overlooked. Catherine befriends George Bennett (the great Philip Jackson), whose eager beaver younger self is played by Lee Ingleby; Tom Maudsley and Dave Hill are both Fine as his loyal if sceptical sergeant. Then there's Greg Wise,supremely arrogant as the man you'd love to hate - but is he a murderer? There are astonishing twists at the end, yet they all make sense: wow!