It’s safe to say we’re pretty long in TV dramas about missing minors.
The disappearance of a child is such a well-worn trope by this point you could probably have a stab at writing one yourself — a panicked parent, a tense police interview, an “obvious” suspect who turns out to be a red herring.
But some dramas are so good they can take familiar ground and somehow relandscape it. Case in point is the award-winning Save Me, written by and starring Lennie James as happy-go-lucky Nelly, whose life becomes a nightmare when his estranged 13-year-old daughter Jody goes missing. But can his follow up, Save Me Too, deliver the same punch?
To recap (Save Me aired in 2018), here’s where we ended season one: after being accused of kidnapping his daughter, whom he has not seen since she was three, Nelly discovered she had been sold into a child sex trafficking ring run by a shady character called Gideon Charles (Adrian Edmondson).
Nelly is back on the trail in his signature puffa coat (Sky Atlantic)”
But Nelly’s rescue attempt, culminating in a Taken-style undercover “bid for Jody at a grim “auction”, led him to inadvertently rescue another girl, Grace, the same age as his daughter. But what about Jody?
Save Me Too begins 17 months (or to put it in Nelly’s agonised words, “17 months, three weeks, five, nearly six days”) after this heart-stopping conclusion.
If season one plays out the events of a child going missing, season two opens with the glum prospect of life when the child is still missing but the rest of the world is ready to move on. How can a parent carry on with life — work, friends, parties — when they’re stuck in the cruellest of limbos, between grief for the lost child and knowledge that they’re still out there?
Jody’s mother Claire (the always-stellar Suranne Jones) visits a group for grief-stricken parents, only to leave abruptly when a fellow member talks about “accepting” her child’s death.
Meanwhile, Nelly is a man “possessed”, still in his signature yellow puffer jacket (“I promised myself I’d wear this one, come what may, until I got her back”), still determined to find his daughter.
We learn from a trusty news source (an Evening Standard front page) that the case against Gideon has collapsed in court. Lenny tracks down Gideon’s wife and threatens her with media exposure unless she gives clues on her husband’s whereabouts. It’s his 50th birthday and he wants a “prezzie extra”.
A series of promising threads are laid down in this opening episode. James’s writing is nimble and at times beautiful — “until the devil turns to dust, that’s how long I’m going to keep going. Because I found you, and that means I can find her” — and his friend Goz, who gabbles nonsense about butterflies not having hearts but only “bags of blood”, provides light relief.
Jones also plays the role of a mother in crisis with masterful restraint — pain concentrated in the furrow between her eyebrows. This might be familiar territory, but it’s in very good hands.
Save Me Too is on Sky Atlantic, tonight at 9pm
