None of us know how we would react to the news of the body of a loved one being found in woodland near our home. But David Morrissey’s painfully uptight headteacher Michael Polly’s first thought is to furiously reprimand Detective Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles), who has just delivered this terrible news, for walking mud into his house. It is, as we’ve already learned by that point, fairly typical behaviour. Polly is, as Cassidy puts it, “a funny fish”. Might he also be a murderer? Let’s just say that on the basis of early impressions, it doesn’t seem impossible.
ITV’s new crime thriller Gone is a fiction but one inspired by real-life detective Julie Mackay and crime journalist Robert Murphy’s 2024 book To Hunt a Killer. As such, it has the ring of both practical and narrative veracity. Michael Polly lives for his work: the plush private school on the outskirts of Bristol over which he presides is clearly organised in his own image – starchy, strict, terribly proper, seemingly seething with all manner of unresolved darkness. His unfortunate daughter Alana (the excellent Emma Appleton) and his self-evidently even more unfortunate wife Sarah are also teachers at the school. It’s horribly cosy and cosily horrible. Mr Polly concludes pretty much every conversation with his family with the words “I’ll see you in assembly”. Soon, it sounds more like a threat than a promise.
