Last seen (Apple TV)
Every psychologist will undoubtedly recognize the pattern.
Dramas down-under have an obsession with missing children. Every other Australian thriller seems to focus on the aftermath of a disappearance.
Perhaps the first, and certainly one of the country’s best films, is Picnic At Sitting Rock, the 1975 story of a student outing at a Victorian boarding school for the daughters of Australia’s super-rich.
Not all girls come back. . . it’s like they just evaporate.
Meryl Streep was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her role as Lindy Chamberlain in 1988’s A Cry In The Dark.
Based on a true case, it charts the ordeal of a grieving mother accused of murder after a wild dingo snatches her baby from a tent during a family camping holiday.
More recently, in 2018, Jenna Coleman was fantastic in The Cry, as a woman suspected of killing her baby (and then her husband) after the child disappeared.
The same theme emerges endlessly. I’m beginning to imagine that the first thing an Australian parent does in the morning is rush to daycare to count their offspring.
Last Seen follows a police dispatcher as he answers an emergency call from a girl he thinks is his daughter. . . seven years after she disappeared (pictured Patrick Brammall as Ian Ridley)
The first two hour-long episodes are now streaming on Apple TV and are a masterclass in the slow build of creepy tension
Last Seen responds to that fixation. It’s based on a novel by Ryan David Jahn, essentially set in Texas, with a simple premise: a police dispatcher takes a 911 call from a girl he thinks is his daughter. . . seven years after she disappeared.
There is nothing simple about the Australian version.
Now streaming on Apple TV, the first two hour-long episodes are a masterclass in the slow build of eerie tension: rolling seas and heavy fog, sunlight filtering through humid air, swirling carnival lights on a hot night, with ever-present undercurrents of violence.
Only at the end of the second part does the missing Maggie choose triple zero (the equivalent of 999).
Although he last saw her when she was three, and her body was supposedly found buried in the woods, her father, Ian, somehow recognizes her name and her voice, and sets out to rescue her.
Ian is played by Patrick Brammall, star of the brilliant antipodean comedy Colin From Accounts.
Viewers who’ve seen all eight episodes of the latest series know that there’s even an irreverent child abduction subplot in that show.
Brammall specializes in rough guys steeped in self-pity and alcohol, making him perfect casting for Last Seen.
He’s an ex-detective who broke down when Maggie was ripped from her bed. Now he is divorced, depressed and fighting, but unable to stay sober.
Maxine Peake has a touch of witchcraft about her as the woman who is apparently now raising Maggie, along with her caretaker husband.
They live in a forest cottage straight out of a Brothers Grimm story, with bundles of dried herbs in the kitchen and chickens in the garden. . . and security cameras flashing on every wall.
But camera surveillance doesn’t keep the bogeyman away.
