CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV

Reported missing

Rating: ****

Trump: the comeback

Rating: **

All children must be microchipped at birth. A satellite tracker, under the skin, can send signals to a phone app, letting parents know where their offspring are.

No more panic if you think you lost your toddler in a supermarket or playground. Worry no more when teens say they’re staying over. An end to the fear when gap year students leave for Thailand.

Don’t piss me off about ‘invasion of privacy’. Every young person with a cell phone is constantly sending personal data to the Silicon Valley megacorps via social media. Why shouldn’t parents know that too?

You’d think I’m kidding, but there’s a serious side to the light-heartedness. Electronic tags might have saved two families in Yorkshire an infinite amount of grief when their autistic sons walked around. The cases, told on Reported Missing (BBC1), can be seen as a powerful case for the technology.

Luke, 29, who lived in a care home outside Sheffield, sent his mother Jo into despair when he gave his carers the misstep. He thought nothing of a nine-mile walk to his parents’ house — but because of his learning disabilities, he was unable to take basic precautions, such as abstaining from food and drink.

He also couldn’t imagine that Mom and Dad might not be home. The cameras followed the police on a frantic search for Luke after an unexpected home visit went awry.

Luke didn’t know his parents were on vacation in Skegness. When they didn’t open the door, he charted a new course. . . but no one could guess where he was going.

In nearby Stocksbridge, 18-year-old Matthew walked out of college after an altercation and disappeared. It took him almost 24 hours to show up, having roamed half of the north of England.

Fans of the C4 surveillance show Hunted may think the police just need to check CCTV coverage or send a helicopter with thermal imagers, and every fugitive will be found.

The truth is very different. There was no footage of Matthew leaving his school because the cameras were out of order. The local bus company admitted they were unable to trace anyone as passengers flashed their passes at the drivers upon boarding.

As an extreme measure, the police checked Matthew’s phone records – but they could only do this because they feared for his survival. In any case, his phone was turned off and untraceable.

Fortunately, both stories ended happily. Matthew came home alone, and by an extraordinary coincidence Luke was spotted in a supermarket parking lot by an off-duty policewoman who had been involved in the search for him that afternoon.

“We’re constantly figuring out how to protect Luke,” Jo said. If you think app trackers for kids and vulnerable adults are a bad idea, you’d better be willing to explain your reasons to Luke’s mom.

Many people would welcome a microchip tracker on Donald Trump, if only to make sure he never went near the White House again. His hints that he could run for president again in 2024 were enough to give TV journalist Katty Kay an excuse to mislabel her report on America’s midterm elections as Trump: The Comeback (BBC2).

“If you thought Trump’s first term was wild, you haven’t seen anything yet,” she promised.

But what unfolded was a dull briefing about Republican rifts and the resigned frustration of voters who dislike Democratic President Joe Biden. Even Katty was bored with the program and joined a cattle raid on horseback instead. One thing is clear: the American liberal media really misses their ogre.

Word play of the evening: ‘Desserts backwards is ‘stressed’, Matt Lucas joked about The Great British Bake Off (C4). Linguists have many terms for words that change their meaning when flipped, including “anadromes,” “levidromes,” and “semordnilaps.” I’ll just say ‘pudding’, thanks.