Gone; The Capture

“David Morrissey is such a natural at doing brooding (think his Gordon Brown in The Deal), gloomy (remember Holding On?) and glowering (try The Long Shadow) you do rather start to worry for him. It is certainly hard to think who else would play a brooding, gloomy and glowering headmaster under suspicion over the disappearance of his wife, for which reason the casting director of Gone (ITV) must have been delighted. The entire success of this sombre thriller pretty much hinges on our view of Morrissey’s Michael Polly, head of a prestigious private school. He has all the above qualities and yet despite his buttoned-up surliness surely he’s a good guy deep down, because isn’t Morrissey always that too?”
James Jackson, The Times

“Gone makes us work for our supper. Clues arrive at the table slowly and from unexpected angles. Stuff turns up and – twang – our preconceptions are once again catapulted into the nearest thicket (watch out, Casper!). Suspense builds, continues to build, and then – the tension! – builds some more. How long before the elastic snaps back? “Not telling,” tee-hees Gone, waving more horrible things at us before scampering back into the undergrowth. If there is a tauter, clammier or more engrossing drama this year I will eat my mortarboard with chips.”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian

“It’s well-paced and the first episode sets things up effectively. The school setting adds another layer, because Polly’s personal and professional lives are so entwined. The drama was partly inspired by the non-fiction book To Hunt a Killer by Detective Superintendent Julie Mackay and journalist Robert Murphy, which detailed the cold case investigation into the 1984 murder of teenager Melanie Road in Bath. I’m not sure how, because this case seems quite different and a disclaimer stresses that “the story, names, characters, places and incidents portrayed in this series are entirely fictitious”. Broadcasters seem to be moving away from the make-everything-a-box-set strategy – Gone will be released as two episodes per week, on Sunday and Monday. That might be frustrating for some in this era of instant gratification, but the show has me sufficiently hooked to come back for more.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“Morrissey is a fine lead, as ever manifesting a stoical but unravelling, deeply repressed middle-aged man with unnerving skill. [Eve]Myles is a likeable antagonist too, expressing a convincing blend of compassion, irritation and wary, midlife disappointment. Everyone, even the school’s teenagers, seems slightly haunted.”
Phil Harrison, Independent 

“Luckily, The Capture isn’t short of charisma in its cast. This convoluted conspiracy fantasy, set in a Britain where AI can instantly replace live TV and surveillance footage with deep fake videos, is compulsively watchable, not for its devious plotlines but because of its stars. [Holliday] Grainger has an exceptional ability to convey a wealth of emotion with barely a flicker of her face. She rarely shouts and never resorts to dramatic gestures, even when others are gunned down around her or she’s staring down the barrel of a pistol herself.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Killing off a main character played by a prominent actor has become a familiar curveball in TV drama. So familiar that sometimes I find myself drumming my fingers in anticipation, muttering, “Come on, then. Get on with it.” But in The Capture (BBC1) I did not expect that. And, possibly like you, I am wondering whether to accept that it really happened at all. On which I blame the premise of The Capture.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“A good conspiracy thriller is always several steps ahead, leaving us running to catch up. The Capture does that in the traditional way with its plotting, giving us twists too swift to be predictable and a wide ensemble of juicy characters whose agendas are expertly marshalled by the writer Ben Chanan: if this person here isn’t up to something, that one over there is. (Chanan, incidentally, has written every episode of The Capture himself and also directed the first season, despite his CV prior to this show being fairly limited. It’s a seriously impressive feat for a lone human, if indeed he is merely a man and not an intimidatingly sophisticated bot.)”
Jack Seale, The Guardian