Gone: David Morrissey keeps you guessing in ‘engrossing’ crime drama

David Morrissey takes on “glowering”, “gloomy” characters with such ease, “you do rather start to worry for him”, said James Jackson in The Times. In ITV’s new crime drama, “Gone”, he stays true to form as Michael Polly, the “brooding” headmaster of a prestigious private school who becomes the prime suspect when his wife vanishes.

“Despite his buttoned-up surliness, surely he’s a good guy deep down, because isn’t Morrissey always that, too?” As with any crime drama worth its salt, “we really don’t know”. Polly displays troubling behaviour from the outset of this “sombre thriller”, showing a peculiar lack of concern when his wife goes missing, and failing to report her disappearance early on.

But perhaps this “stoic and inscrutable” demeanour is just Polly’s way of keeping disruption at the school to a minimum, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. DS Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles) isn’t so sure; she “immediately suspects he was a controlling partner”, and watches with “scepticism” as he appears at a press conference appealing for his wife’s return.

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George Kay’s “slow burn” drama isn’t “just a domestic story”, though, said Phil Harrison in The Independent. There’s an “unfolding back story” about Cassidy’s own troubled relationship and, “more intriguingly, the repercussions of an unsolved case from eight years earlier”. After reeling us in with a “deliberately obvious premise”, the show’s “real cleverness” lies in the way it continuously asks viewers to “question their own judgement”.

What seems at first glance to be a straightforward missing persons case soon unfurls into a “multitude of wrigglier, trickier things” – from the “nature of guilt and co-dependancy” to the “banality of evil”, said Sarah Dempster in The Guardian. “It’s a hugely taut show that will totally subvert your expectations.” Clues are slowly threaded into the narrative from “unexpected angles”, as the tension continues to build. “How long until the elastic band snaps?” This will surely be the most “engrossing” drama of the year.