TV review: The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Netflix (2019)

The basic outlines of the story should be familiar to most people because of the media coverage this case drew all over the world. Netflix takes the watcher behind the scenes in fabulous detail. I was particularly interested in this show as my parents went to the Algarve in the 90s to spend time and to meet family. I felt I knew the place from photographs in my mother’s archive that came to me when she died.

I didn’t know a lot of the facts that the Netflix show reveals however, including the incompetence of the local Portuguese police. Another variable never displayed before is the secrecy with which crimes are investigated there. This holding of the cards close to the chest played out in strange ways. The police on the ground also had very odd ideas about the British friends among whom were Madeleine’s parents, and the public seemed to (perhaps rightly) blame them for leaving the children alone and unsupervised for long periods of time. It’s hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that Gerry and Kate McCann brought this disaster upon themselves by going off the have dinner with other Brits while the children slept in the holiday apartment.

Other things surprised, such as the suspicion that was heaped on innocent bystanders, some of whom became actual suspects targeted by police. The cops don’t come out of this looking very fresh, with one inspector who was dismissed from the case taking revenge by publishing a book that got turned into a TV series. I guess stranger things have happened.

This is a nicely made show and the mystery continues. At the start of each episode the filmmakers place on the screen an appeal to contact Portuguese or British police in case viewers have information. This detail adds a flavour of intrigue, regardless that it is extremely unfortunate that nobody has been able to ascertain where the child is now. I cannot imagine what that must be like.

Gerry and Kate McCann were perhaps unfortunate in being rather controlled people not prone to revealing their emotions. Their impassive faces and clipped words animate the drama is odd ways, and this is another way that the show is slightly uncanny. It might have been this characteristic that caused the Portuguese community to react in the ways they did when confronted by the horror.