Television series

The Missing

Name: The Missing
Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller
Released: 2014
Cast: Anastasia Hille, Tchéky Karyo, James Nesbitt, Eric Godon, Frances O'Connor

A father's daughter, taken. Years pass, and Julien Baptiste, the French detective who never closed the case, won't let it lie. Told across two timelines that slowly converge, this is less whodunit than a study of what not-knowing does to a marriage, a town, a mind. Slow, aching, brilliantly acted — not comfort viewing.

TVMaze rating

8.0

If you liked this

Broadchurch2013

A small English seaside town, a dead child, and a community that turns on itself under suspicion. Same forensic attention to grief and guilt, same sense that everyone's a suspect until proven otherwise.

But The second series divides opinion sharply, and the whodunit reveal isn't the show's strongest card.

Happy Valley2014

Sarah Lancashire is a Yorkshire police sergeant carrying private grief while chasing a case that keeps pulling at old wounds. Same unglamorous, procedural texture; same insistence that trauma doesn't resolve, it just gets carried.

But Bleak and violent in ways that are sometimes hard to sit with — this earns its darkness, but it's dark.

Top of the Lake2013

Jane Campion's New Zealand mystery around a missing girl, shot through with the same dread and moral murk, and a detective as haunted as Baptiste. Gorgeous, strange, deeply upsetting in the right ways.

But Elisabeth Moss's accent takes adjusting to, and the plotting meanders more than a tight thriller fan might want.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Vanishing1988

Same structural engine as The Missing decades early: obsession with an unsolved disappearance, told across time, ending not in triumph but in the cost of never letting go.

A Dutch film about a man who spends years chasing the truth of his girlfriend's disappearance at a highway rest stop — and gets an answer that is worse than not knowing. The one The Missing's whole genre descends from.

But Subtitled, slow, and deliberately anti-cathartic — this is not built for satisfying closure.

The Killing2011

The Danish original that essentially invented this mode of grief-soaked, slow-burn Nordic crime drama. If you liked how The Missing takes its time, this is the show that taught everyone patience pays off.

But Subtitled, unhurried, and twenty episodes per season — a real commitment if you're after something brisk.

Unforgotten2015

Cold-case detectives dig up a decades-old body and, with it, everyone connected to it. Same structural pleasure of watching ordinary lives crack open under old secrets, told with real compassion for the guilty and innocent alike.

But Gentler and more procedural than The Missing — less atmosphere of dread, more careful puzzle-box plotting.

Mare of Easttown2021

Kate Winslet as a small-town Pennsylvania detective investigating a death while her own family quietly falls apart. Same fusion of case and personal collapse, same sense that solving the crime won't fix anything.

But American accents and small-town specifics land differently than the European sensibility of The Missing.

Marcella2016

Anna Friel as a detective returning to a cold case while unraveling personally — twisty, London-set, and unashamedly soapier than The Missing while keeping some of its psychological weight.

But Leans harder into pulpy twists than character study; the plotting occasionally overreaches.

The Fall2013

Gillian Anderson hunting a serial killer in Belfast, with the same patient, dread-filled pacing and refusal to rush toward resolution. A study of pursuit as much as crime.

But Considerably more graphic and killer-focused — a different, colder kind of unease than The Missing's grief.

Prisoners2013

Hugh Jackman as a father taking the search for his abducted daughter into his own hands, with Jake Gyllenhaal's detective working the case properly alongside him. Same anguish, compressed into two relentless hours.

But Grimmer and more violent than The Missing, with a father's vigilantism the film doesn't fully interrogate.

The Keepers2017

Swaps Baptiste's dogged detective for ordinary citizens doing his job themselves — same portrait of a community permanently altered by an unresolved wound, except it actually happened.

A true-crime documentary series about a Baltimore nun's unsolved murder, and the amateur investigators — former students, mostly women in their sixties — who refuse to let it stay buried decades later.

But It's a real case involving real abuse; heavier and angrier than a scripted drama, with no fictional distance to soften it.

Manchester by the Sea2016

Strips away the crime-plot entirely to leave only what The Missing is really about underneath the procedural: how loss just sits inside people and doesn't go away, however much time passes.

Casey Affleck plays a man returning home after tragedy, in a film with almost no plot mechanics at all — just grief, unglamorous and unresolved, moving through a person over time.

But There's no mystery, no investigation, nothing to solve — if you came for the thriller half of The Missing, this offers none of it.