Sometimes, you have to say enough is enough. When something is truly broken – rickety Ikea shelves, shonky standard lamps, the entire criminal justice system – you just have to pull it apart and start again. In the case of the police, there’s a strong line of reasoning that the Taser-happy zealots we currently have should be replaced by upstanding people who embody honesty and integrity. But who could that be? If you believe investigative programming like Serial, Making A Murderer and now, Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared (from Monday, 10am, BBC3), those people turn out to be journalists. I, for one, see no problem at all with this situation.
Unsolved will likely live in the shadow of its US cousins, but the parallels are easy to draw. Alys Harte and Bronagh Munro have embedded themselves on the Isle of Wight to gather information on Damien Nettles, a boy who disappeared in 1996 at the age of 16. On the night of his disappearance, Damien shows up on CCTV in a chip shop, apparently the worse for wear. Another camera captures him walking along Cowes’s quiet high street. And then he’s gone. No body, no convictions and no clear picture of what happened (though there are plenty of rumours; about drugs, ruthless backwater dealers and punitive lessons gone wrong). Damien was, and still is, regarded by police as a missing person. Over eight episodes, Harte and Munro try to make things less murky. They interview Damien’s old friends, chase leads and draw lots of impressive-looking stuff on a whiteboard. The BBC blurb describes it as a forensic serialised investigation.
It’s really the only way Unsolved could be made. Bung all of Harte and Munro’s work into one Panorama-type show and it would be buried. Particularly right now, given the unending tide of horrific news. Cutting it up and sticking it online, however, makes Unsolved quite different. Breaking it up into eight episodes encourages the instant, loyalty card gratification of binge-watching them all in quick succession, while the 10-ish minute running time per episode makes it manageable for even BBC3’s attention span-deficient audience. A deliberate DIY style gives the sense of being let in on a secret; as you watch the Isle of Wight police’s total uselessness there’s even a cheeky edge of conspiracy. This all makes for compelling viewing, until Damien’s mum and brother return to the island, still raw 20 years later, and we’re reminded that in the middle of all this is a missing child and a painfully empty space where there should be answers.
Such a moment of realisation raises questions beyond those surrounding Damien’s disappearance. Are stories like this told to help investigations reach their just conclusion or are they for our entertainment? When Damien’s younger brother, visibly upset and understandably desperate, presses Damien’s best friend for explanations he hasn’t got, are we bearing witness or shrinking down our own decency in exchange for 10 minutes of juiciness? Or, most likely, are we as viewers placing ourselves somewhere in between?
These are bloody heavy questions, to be honest. So allow me to end on a pettier note. Unsolved has a score of twanging, southern gothic guitar bookending each episode. It’s just like Making A Murderer and doesn’t seem right. Clearly a hectic waltzer-inspired bit of DJ Shadow would be the thing to accompany a story of mid-90s drug dealers? Even some vintage Sash! would be more appropriate Like I say, more questions than answers.
