If you're a fan of well acted, tension-building psychological thrillers, ITV's Gone needs to skyrocket straight to the top of your crime drama watch list.
Airing on ITV from Sunday, March 8 at 9pm, the six-part series also takes inspiration from real events, and has an added dose of some lovely Bristol scenery, for those who like to know where the shows they're tuning into are filmed.
David Morrissey is on excellent form as headmaster of a prestigious school, Michael Polly.
Known for often playing intense and authoritative characters, David recently took a massive break in form to be downtroddenly hilarious in BBC comedy, Daddy Issues - well worth a watch if you need to break up your crime dramas with some humour.
He makes an excellent return to type in Gone, being both intense and authoritative with added menace thrown in for good measure. When his wife Sarah disappears, Michael is oddly detached and doesn't immediately report it. Red flags begin to wave.
DS Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles) is understandably perplexed Michael's hesitation to report his wife missing when he eventually does, and is rightly confused by his apparent fixation on the rugby team he coaches, instead of interest in where on earth his wife has gone.
David leaves Sarah a voicemail saying, "We can't have this again," hinting she's disappeared before, so why does he tell the police she's never done anything like this before? The tension is rising.
DS Annie Cassidy, like many TV detectives, has a chaotic private life involving a ex that really needs ditching for good.
She's also haunted by her sense of failure involving the unsolved murder of a young woman she once knew. But she also has an acute sense of justice, and is good at her job.
Annie develops a surprising bond with Michael Polly, whose lack of emotion about Sarah's death and apparent need to control how his own family deal with it, put him at the top of the suspect list for the police, and top of the ostracisation list for the locals.
Relationships between the characters are well drawn, and there's much more focus on building these properly and the exploration of human nature and the challenges of being human, rather than shocks or action sequences.
The quiet sprawl of Bristol, the forest surrounding Michaels' home, and the eerily quiet, dark and uninviting house itself, are the perfect props and extras to convey the slow-burn disquiet.
The added element of intrigue involves the show drawing on real life events for inspiration. Although Sarah's story is fictional, the series takes partial inspiration from the book To Hunt a Killer, written by respected former Detective Superintendent for Gloucestershire Police, Julie Mackay, and ITV Crime Correspondent Robert Murphy.
The book chronicles Julie Mackay's 2009 cold case investigation into the murder of Melanie Road, as she made her way home from a Bath nightclub in 1984. Reopening the case 32 years after she was killed, Julie was able to bring the killer to justice.
Both Mackay and Murphy serve as consultants on the series. Appearing on This Morning to talk about her appearance on the show, Eve Myles shared praise for Julie Mackay's work on Gone.
"Julie Mackay is the most inspirational, wonderful woman that I've been honoured to meet," she says, adding, "The story is inspired by her story, and she was on call for me 24/7. So, my first port of call was with Julie."
Eve continues to explain that Julie even makes a cameo in the show. "She's also a supporting artist in it," she says, adding, "She came on and she's in the police station with us. We were all hyper-vigilant, like, 'We've really got to look like police officers now, because she's here.'"
"She was so generous with her time and brutal with her advice, and I'm really pleased for her that this has come to fruition."
Gone starts on ITV at 9pm on March 8, and all six episodes will be available to view on ITVX on the same day.
