The Missing
BBC One
***
Black Mirror: White Christmas
Channel 4
*****
A drama serial whose fractured time scheme relied heavily on hair growth to explain where we were in the narrative outdid itself last night. The Missing ended with James Nesbitt, as the father of the missing boy Olly, tramping Russia wearing the most magnificent beard. The weariness and, indeed, madness in Tony’s whiskery face argued against what he represented in the drama, which was Never Give Up. Everyone else — wife, cop, reporter — finally succumbed to the exigencies of life. As W.C. Fields countercommanded: “If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then give up. No point being a damn fool about it.”
The dogged grimness of Harry and Jack Williams’s drama