Around a decade ago, I discovered that an acquaintance very sincerely believed Madeleine McCann’s parents were involved in her disappearance. This acquaintance was by all appearances deeply normal. She had a job, paid her taxes, and enjoyed going to gigs and movies. She also insisted that Kate and Gerry McCann, whose pained expressions had been splashed across the world’s papers and news bulletins with slightly punishing regularity since 2007, weren’t telling the truth about the night their three-year-old vanished, and that tales of kidnappings, wide open windows, and German paedophiles in the shadows were all a hoax. She came to this conclusion after reading about the case on the internet, trawling vast sub-Reddits and conspiracy threads on Twitter in between Angry Birds and Zoella videos.
She and other Madeleine McCann truthers, of which there seem to be many, will be delighted by the arrival of Under Suspicion: Kate McCann, a Channel 5 docudrama – following hot on the heels of their grim Huw Edwards drama in March – and somewhat improbably the first TV dramatisation of the Madeleine McCann saga in the 19 years since she was last seen. It is, according to its makers, designed to spotlight the unjustness of a notable episode in the aftermath of Madeleine’s disappearance – 98 days after the night she vanished, to be specific – in which Portuguese police officially declared the McCanns suspects. (This “arguido” status was lifted in 2008, with the police formally apologising for their handling of the case five years later.) But in its slavish devotion to two specific police interrogations and its arbitrary arrival in the schedules – pegged not to an anniversary, or new revelations, or really much of anything – Under Suspicion has the unintentional effect of seeming like a referendum on the McCanns. Armchair detectives will have a field day. Likewise those who’ve seen a few TikToks and therefore insist they know the specific micro-expressions and physical tells of when a person is lying.
