The premise of the six episodes now available, each of which stands alone, is that a person has vanished, generally not inexplicably, but in circumstances in which the perpetrators of an apparent homicide can not be prosecuted. The shows imply the identity of the murderer (or murderers), provide certain clues, and solicit viewers to provide additional information so that the crime can be solved. The format of each of the shows is the same: there is a brief introduction in which a grieving relative expresses sorrow and anger about the disappearance of a loved one, then, titles with creepy, minor-key music slithering all over the credits. The business of the show begins with an introduction of the characters, proceeding chronologically up to the point of the victim's disappearance. Then, various suspects are identified and physical clues depicted. The programs always end with a black screen on which titles are printed indicating that the perpetrator remains unknown (or, at least, not prosecuted) and that tips should be forwarded to the FBI or unsolved.com
This is a carefully produced program that seems to play fair - in other words, pro and con evidence as to the show's hypothesis of guilt, generally coded and implicit as opposed to explicitly stated (for legal reasons I assume), is presented. Although the show is manipulative, it seems that the viewer is afforded his or her own view of the evidence, facts that can be interpreted in various ways. (In other words, the manipulation is disguised.) The shows are simply gorgeous -- the interviews with grief-stricken survivors are shot in shadowy, elegant settings with film noir style lighting. Steadi-cam imagery, often taken by drones, provides gorgeous landscapes. The final episode, for instance, shot in the Ozarks of Missouri, features low-flying drones that produce stunning images of woods, small farms, rural intersections, all captured during the magic hour, at twilight with luminous glowing skies. Everything is portentously lit, shadowy, with the camera gliding over rough rural roads or tracking mysterious vehicles that seemed dragged forward by the claw of their headlights through inky darkness. Locations are charted on maps and time-lines are provided as graphics superimposed upon the mournful, crepuscular imagery. Everything is designed to be tasteful and sophisticated: the grieving relatives suppress tears don't become hysterical -- there are no unseemly displays of emotion, probably because the disappearance is generally 10 to 15 years earlier; demands for vengeance are stated with the precise, analytical gravity that one might find in a classical Greek tragedy; there are no gory shots of corpses -- it's all beautifully filmed and understated although the subject matter is often violently lurid. If the show were shot to capitalize on the hysterics and melodrama integral to the subject matter, it would be over-the-top and unwatchable. The restrained approach to the material has the effect of rendering compulsively watchable material that would be otherwise too horrific to tolerate.
In the first episode, a Hispanic man with Puerto Rican background goes missing. He's an up-and-comer, working for a public relations firm that issues stock tips. A hole is discovered in the roof of a sealed-off racquet ball court under the eaves of a prestigious Baltimore hotel. Of course, the man's decomposed corpse is found there with just about every bone in his body broken, damage that suggests some sort of torture before the body was thrown from a great height through the roof. But there's no way that the man's body could have been launched from the adjacent hotel, a spooky structure that could feature in a horror movie, and there's other peculiarities as well -- the man's employer lawyers-up, despite being the victim's best friend, and an enigmatic, utterly bizarre note is found taped to the back of a computer suggesting the complicity of --- freemasons! It's pretty clear that the dead man's employer had something to do with the bizarre killing -- there's weird lawsuits in the background and pending judgments. But nothing can be proven. In one episode, a Black man (22) goes with a bunch of White friends to a tiny town in Kansas called La Cygne. He vanishes after there's a miscommunication and his White buddies go home without him. Everyone searches the fields and a nearby creek for 30 days. When the FBI gives up on the case, the family mounts their own search and finds the man's badly decomposed body in plain sight next to the stream. So how did this happen? The disquieting suggestion in this program as that an entire town has committed the murder or conspired to conceal it -- the situation is a little like Bad Day at Black Rock. A French aristocrat, supposedly involved in secret work for the American DEA seems to have murdered his whole family, four children, his wife and two dogs. He vanishes. The trail leads to a remote part of southern France where there are towering stone monoliths. Presumably, the villain goes there to kill himself. A camera picks up his image walking through a parking lot toward the uncanny looking hoodoos in the hills carrying a long gun. There's another baffling letter and everyone seems to think that the murderer has escaped to South America. A hairdresser vanishes after announcing she's going to divorce her much older husband. He's the obvious suspect, appears to mourn her on camera, and no one can figure out a way to prove that he committed the crime. In the Ozarks, a nightmare black widow seduces one man after another and, then, kills her husband. She swears her six daughters to secrecy. One of her daughters confesses her own involvement in the murder and destruction of her stepfather's corpse -- then, she vanishes and the black widow ends up in custody of the young woman's little boy. One of the sisters says: she always wanted a son but had six daughters and, so, part of her scheme was to murder her daughter in order to get possession of the little boy. An uncharacteristic episode, which is very scary, involves a group of people in the Berkshires of Massachusetts who all claim to have seen a huge UFO and, in some cases, to have been abducted by it for two or three hours. The witnesses are the most sober, persuasive group of people that you could ever imagine. They seem to have no motive for their claims, haven't published books or accounts and, in fact, have remained scrupulously silent about this event into their old age. They each independently claim to have reported the events to the police and the press -- but examination of these sources reveals nothing about the encounters. This is an example where negative evidence has the effect of creating a weird atmosphere in itself -- the witnesses are completely objective about their experience and wholly credible. So why is there no record of the encounters?
This show will not be to all tastes. But it's extremely beautifully shot -- the rural landscapes have an ominous brooding presence and the witnesses seem scrupulously truthful. This was a popular show in its earlier incarnations and I found it remarkably compelling. And I'm looking out for clues to send to the FBI.
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