Missing series 2 an abducted girl reappears after 12 years

I remember well the first series of the British American Missing with James Nesbitt seeking to recover an abducted boy so I decided to watch the second series which commenced on October 12 with the 3^rd episode on October 26th. I am covering some of the work of James Nesbitt when writing about the latest series of Cold Feet after an absence of over a decade.

As with Ivy in Thirteen, a daughter Alice, aged 11 years who disappeared while her father, an army officer was stationed in Germany in 2002, dramatically reappears when she walks out of a forest 12 years later and where it emerges she has held with another girl Sophie Giraux, a crime investigated by a French Police detective Julien Baptiste. He had promised to do everything to find the child but without success, he had failed to prevent Mrs Giraux committing suicide from a building in the presence of her husband who understandably has never forgiven Baptise for his failure, something which Bapriste has also failed to do.

Alice is disorientated and in bare feet when she is discovered and from the outset there are questions about her and her story. The father is played by the established actor David Morrissey who has had a long and outstanding stage, TV and film career and plays an officer no longer on active duty because of incident which has left him disfigured from burns. While he is immediately convinced the girl is Alice, his partner is not convinced.  As with Ivy the father and the victim want to return to their home but her behaviour is intended to alert us that something is not right. She persuades her brother to lock her in the garden shed at night she cannot cope with the normality of heated room, soft bed and family sleeping times. I briefly had a similar experience after months of hard bed in a cell with a light always on so a check could have been at intervals throughout the night. It also brings back the hours I spent as child kept in room and told to be silent while visitors from the homeland of my birth and care mothers were in their home and were not to know of existence.

With help in which the Amy can join forces with the German police the place in which for a time the two girls are believed to have been held together in a WWII bunker. There is a private meeting at one point between Alice and the commanding senior officer and from their conversation it is possible to say that he was somehow involved with the disappearance. A receipt discovered at the bunker leads them to a local butcher whose wife had served in the army with history yet to be revealed but where the commanding officer appears to have some hold over her. Alice identifies the butcher from a series of photos. The man is arrested and subsequently convicted and imprisoned.

The French Detective retired and suffering from terminal cancer abandons his wife determined to fulfil his promise to Mrs Giroux and her husband and persuades the parents to allow him to talk to Alice and given the similarity between the two girls when they were abducted he begins to question which girl has reappeared, doubts which the mother has already tried to voice. He speaks to the girl in French but she appears not to understand. He suggests to the mother a DNA test which Alice overhears. Baptiste contacts Mr Giroux to persuade him to go with him to Germany. Understandably he refuses.  Alive kills herself by setting fire to the garden shed with herself inside.

The series switches between 2002, 2014 and the present when the son appears to have become embittered and right wing carries out a request from Alice to visit the man she accused in prison and say sorry on her behalf. Baptiste is in Iraq in search of an army officer who he had met at the time of the original disappearance and who has joined one of the warring groups.  He persuades a journalist with connections to take up into an area of conflict and on their way from a deserted   village where there was evidence the army officer had been present they are taken by the Peshmerga soldiers and brought to their frontline where they meet up with the army officer who although appears to know something refuses to help. Back in Germany the mother comes across a video which appears to show her daughter, alive. The first series had eight episodes.

Thirteen the abduction and imprisonment of a girl for the purpose of sex

Thirteen. I missed the original BBC showing of the five-episode showing of Thirteen, the fictional account of a young women who at the age of 26 escapes after 13 years of captivity for sex. The episodes are available on the BBC I Player. She is found  by the police and DNA confirms  she is the missing daughter of a couple  who have separated, the husband living with his personal assistant at work and a young daughter who  is about to marry and lives with her fiancé at the family home, Despite warnings that adjustment  back will be difficult daughter and her mother and mother insist on an immediate return  home and mother also insists on the husband moving back into the household in order to re-establish a normality as things were 13 years before. Ivy, the victim, appears as determined as her mother to recreate the situation before the adduction.

The police have questions, not the least to identify and apprehend the perpetrator and are concerned what appears to them to be a reluctance rather than an inability help find the location. When they do they find evidence of inconsistency in the story presented that Ivy was never allowed out of the basement where she was held and which has been cleared along with the rest of house to provide no evidence or clues of what has happened and where the captor could now be. Then the discovery of female clothing in any upstairs bedroom suggests that she was allowed out of the basement and then the discovery of torn passport size photo indicates she was out of the house. Ivy claims that although this happened there was never an opportunity to get help or escape.  CCTV footage from a shopping mall demonstrates this also was not true.

The next development is the identification and location of the captor’s mother to a residential home where it established she died sometime previously but had another son. The finding that there was a younger half-brother adds to concern about the story Ivy has given.  The female police detective has been the most sceptical about the story presented and works out there is more space in the cellar area that what appears and discover a false wall behind which is the skeleton of the half-brother. The evidence of his age confirms that he was present in the property during the time Ivy was captive and it is her DNA on the covering of the remains. She admits she was present when the captor killed his half-brother and is charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Through social media Ivy had contacted a boy with whom she had been close when she disappeared. It is evident she had hoped he had remained faithful in his commitment at the time to her. He hides the fact that he has married and is guilty about establishing a life for himself and where he fails to share his developing contact with his wife and which causes Ivy and his wife to distrust him when the truth emerges. Ivy was on her way to meet up with two school’s friends on the morning she disappeared and one of the friends returns, guilty at the decision not to attend the meeting and at first is forgiven by Ivy because of all the other if only events had not happened that day. What is not forgiven is failing to disclose she had stayed with the former boyfriend and his wife on returning and knew he was married.

It has emerged that the captor had worked at the school but does this fact alone account for the panic by the Headmaster at the news that Ivy has returned and over the series we discover that the cause of his guilt is that on the morning on her disappearance he was having a secret assignation with the girl’s mother.  The younger sister at first convinced the returning young woman was not her sister changes and the two become conspiratorial and this undermines the relationship with the fiancé. The programme highlights the anger victims feel with their families over having found ways to move on.

Concern by police mounts when another young girl is kidnapped and by the same captor and because of having killed his half-brother the welfare of the kidnapped girl becomes urgent and paramount. The captor contacts the police asking for a meeting with Ivy. Everyone is reassured that Ivy will be protected at the meeting in a shopping centre with 50 plain clothes officer monitoring. Despite this the captor has contact undetected and makes his escape with Ivy on the basis the new kidnapped girl is released which she is unharmed and reunited with her parents[CS1] .

Worse is to follow because the captor can escape further to an unknown destination by causing the chasing vehicle with the two detectives to crash, seriously injuring one. We switch to house where Ivy is being half again and we learn that she had been pregnant at one point and the man appears determined to reinstate their previous relationship. She manages to escape from the house which explodes in a burst of flames in a planned suicide attempt by the captor as the police who with the help of the recovered girl have located the property. What is also clear is that the substance of Ivy’s story is proven. The outline of the story fails to convey the insight into the complex impact of being taken, raped and held for years has had on Ivy and need to block out and go back to the girl and situation as before. While there are some credibility issues in the storyline there are several excellent other performances. I am still left with the question Entertainment no so what has been the point?

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Department Q

On returning to my room and a change of clothing and time to view the last part of Strictly Come Dancing with some very good performances with one meriting 39 from 40 points, and the first hour of the X Factor before one off Danish Film Department Q. The Keeper of Lost Causes based on a book and which been followed by two other films although these are not to be shown. Watching the Saturday evening series in a language other than English has become an  important regular event in my life with Inspector Montalbano my favourite because of the intertwining of the love of Mediterranean food with his detective skill and the Young Montalbano series has also  been exceptional, similarly to the recreation of Moorse following the death of leading and irreplaceable action John Thaw, followed by the series from the books of Henning Mankell, the Detective Wallander, where Kenneth Branagh has also made brilliant English versions of the Detective and the Danish political series Borgen on Coalition government which ranks alongside the West Wing for the White House reality and the Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister series here in the UK. Romanzo Criminale and Corleone focussed on the Mafia and separate Roman criminal gangsterism with the Tunnel also being notable and meriting some writing to remind me of their experience

On Saturday evening 15^th October 2016 hoping to be engaged and taking away the disappointment of not being able to go and see a play at the National Theatre where I had bought an expensive ticket and the theatre was unable to give me a credit towards a future production. I watched Department Q in anticipation but conclude that there was something nasty about this work, perhaps because it came too close to the reality of the terror of what being imprisoned is like. Over the past year there has been a series of films about the taking of young women and keeping them for the sexual pleasure of one man with currently on BBC TV Missing and 13.

The one off of three films begins with interest when one of a team of three detectives is murdered, a second finds himself paralysed, the third who was also shot but survives to physically recover is relegated to permanently close the accumulation of cold cases and is appointed an enthusiastically Muslim with a taste for loud contemporary music. The sense of guilt and failure of the one who survives and the despair and frustration of second is immediately real, with the urge to get back to work understandable and the anger and frustration at being given a desk job and having to work with someone new and cannot possibly understand how one is feeling

The assistant selects the first batch of cases with a parade of photographs and which includes one, Carl, the reluctant boss knows something about the case of a young woman politician who is believed to have committed suicide disappearing from a ferry leaving her brother with what first appears to be severe learning difficulties from head injuries in a car accident which killed their parents.

The unravelling of what actually happened is thorough and clever and early on we learn that the young woman was in fact kidnapped and is being kept in a decompression chamber which limits the confined area and also enables the perpetrator to changing levels of physical unpleasantness. There is a credible method for of food and water dealing with sanitation and the provision of food and water but it stretches credulity that the woman is able to survive this limited environment for year upon year. The juxtaposition of being a witness to the horror and the brutality the young women experience and the difficulties the detectives face adds to the tension which the film creates and where it is clear that the motive for the imprisonment is not sexual but with the perpetrator insisting on having voyeuristic pleasures in her increasing discomfort making it plain he is seeking a prolonged painful death as the outcome but not why.

We learn that the perpetrator as boy was in a car travelling in the same direction as his prisoner who exchange looks as one of the cars overtakes the other, and he girl for some reason places her hand of the face of the person in front thus it is suggested causing the accident which kills parents, his sister and leads to physical and emotional condition of the girl’s brother who she now cares for. The boy is placed in a children’s home and portrayed as disruptive and violent, befriending another, who as an adult appears to have been a conference with the girl who has become a politician attends. At least this is the impression first gained as the detectives identify the friend as the likely suspect as he is identified as being on the ferry from which the woman disappeared, believed committed to suicide.

That the detectives commenced to find out what happened by going out of the basement into the field was never intended and opposed, particularly by the detective originally in charge of the investigation into the death. When it is established that the perpetrator has committed suicide over the side of a small boat, a fishing enthusiast, on a lake, the two are ordered to close the case and return to the others which the disobey and are suspended. Fortunately, they quickly discover that the dead man is not the perpetrator. Because they learn that the brother is more traumatised than physically damaged, the assistant who is a practicing Muslim, to provide the obligatory representative diversity now required has the temperament to sit with the young man until he is able to obtain responses to a collection of photographs taken at the political event and which include photos of the perpetrator. The breakthrough occurs when a witness does not identify the perpetrator as the man at the conference which the brother has identified from the photographs taken at the political event. It is at this point we understand that the perpetrator has killed his friend in order to switch identities to get to the conference after seeing a TV report of the girl as a budding politician.

It is at this point we are asked to accept another coincidence which challenges rationality, although nothing like the challenges posed by the film Inferno which I was to see the Sunday lunchtime. The perpetrator now lives in an isolated ramshackle farm assortment of buildings with his disabled mother who survived the crash but was unable to care for him as a child and where his father had work involving diving and a decompression chamber within the home. The detectives arrive do not accept the story that he is away from the mother and leave when Carl realises that the pile of petrol cans means that there is a generator which has been petrol power in order that the increase in energy use cannot be recorded but why would the authorities take an interest anyway for which there could be a number of legitimate reasons.

They return meet up with the perpetrator who at first denies and then puts up a desperate fight to complete the murder of his victim, wounding the assistant with a gunshot and almost killing Carl with a ligature. It is the assistant using extreme violence who stops and kills the assailant.  The woman survives maintained in a pressure container in an attempt to undo the adjustments to her body caused by the years of captivity in which despite the limitations of her confinement she has concentrated on remaining physically fit and sane. The two detectives are rewarded with medals and Carl told he can re-join his former team. He declines wanting to continue Department Q with the assistant and an assistant to administrative and secretarial help and no doubt to provide the female interest. For whatever unknown reason this did not become the ongoing TV series similar to Cold Case here in the UK, but there have been two other ones off films in successive years.  I can only assume this is because of the gratuitous violence used and the protracted voyeuristic scene making it more a film for the cinema than the TV.

Perspectives on Queen Victoria

A number of significant Television series programmes have or are coming to an end over the first part of October 2016 and it is difficult to decide on an order of importance so I will begin with Victoria, an ITV production of eight episodes aimed at the Downton Abbey Sunday night audience over the past eight weeks and where a second series and a Christmas special have been commissioned. The aim of the production was to compete with the BBC’s success of Poldark and its central male character, selecting Jenna Coleman who made her name in over150 episodes of the soap Emmerdale and since 2012 was the companion of Dr Who Matt Smith, with whom she worked previously and where it is said she can talk faster than him.  The series was therefore set up as mass entertainment and not a documentary on our knowledge of the Empress of India, head of the Empire, long reigning, great grandmother with many children, refusing to recognise her public role following the death of her husband and overseeing as head of state the most dramatic and significant period in the economic and social history of Britain.

Because of this I commenced to study social and economic as well as political history during the first year at Ruskin College 19611962 having previously obtained my only Advanced Level General certificate of education in the British Constitution and one of the ordinary level certificates in History and although I changed to public and social administration and child social work I have maintained an interest in the period over subsequent decades building up a mini library of non fiction.

The overview of the period centering on the role of Government are Edward Woodward’s Age of Reform 1815 to 1870 and The Ensor England 1870-1914 in the Oxford History  series, together with  Court’s Economic History, Arthur Bryant’s English Saga, and with a focus on Queen Victoria, Kings and Queens England edited by Antonia Fraser together with her editing of the  Dorothy Marshalls Victoria which includes contemporary visual records and the authoritative biography by Elizabeth Longford who was gained access to the Royal records and a wide range of other documentation including the diaries. The relationship between Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne, a period in which she was referred to as Mrs Melbourne because of the amount of time spent with him, is covered in David Cecil’s biography called Melbourne. G.M Young’s Portrait of an Age together with the Victoria Age 1815-1914 by R J Evans provides also broad sweeps of the period. Cole and Postgate’s, The Common People and Cole’s History of the British working class movement cover the traumatic transition from an agricultural to industrial economy. Social concerns are covered in the biography of Shaftesbury by Georgina Battiscombe with the underclass covered in Peter Quennell’s London Underworld and Kellow Chesney’s The Victorian Underworld, together with Dickens of London by Wolf Mankowitz and contrasting with Young’s Victorian Essays and Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians. The last word on the era of the British Empire is covered by Colin Cross in The Fall of the British Empire.

With this knowledge immediate available together with films and TV series about the era going back over several decades I commenced to view the new television series with some apprehension asking the question how will it measure up as dramatic and information entertainment as well as historical accuracy? The most recent films have been Emily Blunt’s Young Victoria and Judy Dench as the widow Queen, provocatively titled, Mrs Brown but I can go back to the Anna Neagle films made in 1937 and 1938 Victoria the Great and Sixty Glorious Years, the BBC TV series Happy and Glorious 1952, the 1964 Granada TV series Victoria Regina and their I997 series Victoria and Albert. Give my recent writing on the Kinks they created a song in 1969 called Victoria.

The mistake I believe ITV has made is to attempt a ratings and attention competition with the BBC over Poldark and the need to attract the Down Abbey and Upstairs and Downstairs audience and the younger generation to stay watching after the X Factor by some spicing up and creating events about without there is no historical basis or twisting past events to meet fashionable contemporary attitudes. The audience has fallen from eight and a half to just under seven and a half million before the last series one episode this past Sunday 9^th October 2016. The choice of the former Dr Who assistant as the Queen and the approach of the production led to a massive outburst of spleen in the Spectator by James Delingpole who called the work silly, facile and irresponsible and went on as a sub head to say “I blame the feminisation of culture.” His outburst provoked a massive response of outrage. The Guardian was more appreciative but also opened by suggesting that ITV “didn’t need to embellish” the life of the Queen, claiming it was wild enough already. Matthew Dennison went onto suggest that its silliness was due to exaggeration that grossly distorting of facts arguing that a good fist was made of the relationship between the young Queen and Lord Melbourne. She did loathe her mother’s “adviser” and thought her mother weak and over protective. She resisted the attempts at forced marriage and came to adore him. There was open hostility to Albert because he was German and resistance to his being given a formal role and by Victoria to his participation in helping out in her official role. She was the subject of what appeared at the time to be an assassination attempt but the idea that Albert took an immediate interest in the plight of the working classes or the Queen expressed views in support of the Chartist movement appear to have no foundation. It would be surprising if any young mother did not have great fears about her first child birth and the loss of some children was commonplace as well as breeding many children in part to compensate for their loss, but mainly because begetting children was regarded as a male right and confirmation of his masculinity and respective roles of men and women in their place. In this respect the notion of any woman, including a reigning head of state having opinions or taking decisions unguided by men was unthinkable. I also suspect that there is no evidence for the stories concerning the Royal Household.

My response after watching the first episode live has been to record and watch when I can later sometimes fast forwarding sequences lacking any interest. I have never watched Poldark. I looked forward to watching Downton Abbey which had characters of substance which I was able to believe in and where a commitment to portraying the period was scrupulously researched and implemented throughout. I came to care about most of the characters but this was lacking throughout the first series of Victoria. It will be interesting to see the width of the time period and the  international and nation event upon which the second series is to be based.