Series Review: "The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann" (2019).

From the director of Fyre comes The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann. This documentary series directed by Chris Smith. The series takes a detailed look at the disappearance of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann, who vanished while on holiday with her family.

On the evening of 3 May 2007, Madeleine Beth McCann disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment at a resort in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve region of Portugal. Madeleine was on holiday from the UK with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann; her two-year-old twin siblings; and a group of family friends and their children. She and the twins had been left asleep at 20:30 in the ground-floor apartment, while the McCanns and friends dined in a restaurant 55 metres (180 ft) away. The parents checked on the children throughout the evening, until Kate discovered she was missing at 22:00. Over the following weeks, particularly after misinterpreting a British DNA analysis, the Portuguese police came to believe that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment and that her parents had covered it up. In September 2007, the McCanns were given arguido (suspect) status, which was lifted when Portugal's attorney general archived the case in July 2008 for lack of evidence. The parents continued the investigation using private detectives until Scotland Yard opened its own inquiry, Operation Grange, in 2011. The senior investigating officer announced that he was treating the disappearance as "a criminal act by a stranger", most likely a planned abduction or burglary gone wrong. In 2013, Scotland Yard released e-fit images of men they wanted to trace, including one of a man seen carrying a child toward the beach that night. Shortly after this, the Portuguese police reopened their inquiry. In 2015, Operation Grange was scaled back, but the remaining detectives continue to pursue a small number of inquiries described in April 2017 as significant. In June 2020, the police in the German city Braunschweig stated there was a new suspect in McCann's disappearance. To this day, her whereabouts remain unknown. The disappearance attracted sustained international interest and saturation coverage in the UK reminiscent of Princess Diana's death in 1997. The McCanns were subjected to intense scrutiny and baseless allegations of involvement in their daughter's death, particularly in the tabloid press and on Twitter. In 2008 they and their travelling companions received damages and apologies from Express Newspapers, and in 2011 the McCanns testified before the Leveson Inquiry into British press misconduct, lending support to those arguing for tighter press regulation.

Even if this crime is solved someday, the series will remain relevant because of how it processes the psychological experience of death, grief and uncertainty. The series is difficult and challenging, but it is not lazy. And in a world where these kinds of stories so often are the source of hysterical sensationalism, a degree of thoughtfulness and introspection is long overdue. Desperately, these people all want the truth and that tension is what makes the series provocative.

Simon says The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann receives:

Also, see my review for Fyre.