Last Seen review – this gripping Apple TV thriller is one of the standout shows of the year
Patrick Brammall and Maxine Peake star in this superbly acted and absolutely riveting drama about a father who thinks his missing daughter may still be alive after a mysterious phone call
Last Seen is a classic, twisty thriller with a killer premise: a grieving father, whose young daughter went missing years ago and is now presumed dead, one day receives a phone call that he is convinced is from her. Hats off to director Christian Schwochow for delivering such a muscular, propulsive experience: I felt deeply invested from the start and by the third episode I was totally hooked. Getting between me and the screen would have been like trying to take a steak away from a dog.
Ian (Patrick Brammall, fresh from the very different Colin from Accounts) is a former cop who now works for Australia’s 000 emergency phone service (the equivalent of the US’s 911 or the UK’s 999). His daughter Maggie disappeared 11 years ago. Ian is now six months sober and separated from his ex-wife (Jessica Wren). He eats alone, at home, with an unopened vodka bottle on the table in front of him, as if to say to himself: “I could, but I won’t.” He blames himself for the past and cannot move on.
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The aforementioned telephone conversation features prominently in the show’s trailer, though it actually takes place at the end of the second episode. Which sounds like a long time to wait, though the series has a lot of groundwork to establish and wastes no time doing so. As for the person on the other end of the line: I’ll take a very cautious approach to spoilers and won’t say anything more.
The real MacGuffin – the event that truly sends the story barrelling forward – actually arrives before that important phone call, when the remains of a small child are found in Victorian bushland, near where Ian lives. The obvious conclusion is that these are Maggie’s remains. Ian rushes to the crime scene, starts sniffing around, and injects himself into the investigation. Things, of course, are not exactly what they seem. The plot thickens.
Writer Kris Mrksa has adapted Ryan David Jahn’s novel The Dispatcher into a script that, for me, brought to mind an interview with Breaking Bad and Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan, in which he revealed the two fundamental questions that his writing rooms revolve around: “Where’s a character’s head at?” and “What happens next?” These questions are clearly driving Last Seen too.
Brammall does a great job portraying an average person who has been profoundly changed by extraordinary circumstances; Ian is embittered, emboldened, aggrieved and enraged. We like and care for him, even when he’s unhinged and desperate. It’s also good to hear Brammall perfectly deliver quintessentially Australian lines (such as “my life’s still in the shitter”) in a naturalistic way we don’t always hear on television.
Another key player emerges in a local, Harry (Brendan Cowell), who is the brother of Ian’s friend Donald (Daniel Henshall). Harry and his wife Jenna (Maxine Peake) have some, shall we say, unconventional ideological views, that are best left for the series to unpack.
Cowell is darkly magnetic, imbuing Harry with a heavy-hearted stoop, and the measured cadence of someone who might be hiding something. Maybe many things. It’s a superb performance, eclipsing my previous favourite Cowell role – as a tinnitus-suffering police officer in the Australian cop movie Noise. Peake is also terrific as Jenna, carving out an enigmatic and deeply conflicted space, and bringing great weight to simple lines. This is a superbly acted show, buttressed by top-notch writing: all the characters are so interesting and richly layered.
As the first Apple TV series made entirely in Australia – it was filmed in Victoria, where it is set – Last Seen has the aesthetic polish we’ve come to expect from the streaming platform: a high-end, prestige drama gloss. This kind of sheen can sometimes leave their shows feeling a little homogenised, but here it works a treat, thanks to the sharp eye of Bonnie Elliott, who is one of Australia’s most accomplished cinematographers (my favourite work of hers includes Spear, These Final Hours, and Undertow).
But as good as it looks, it’s the people and plots in Last Seen that’ll stick in your head. It doesn’t just pile on the twists; it makes the twists really matter, because we always understand, with painful clarity, the emotional consequences for the people experiencing them. This is riveting television, and one of the standout shows of the year.
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