The Stolen Girl ☆☆☆

Starring: Denise Gough, Holliday Grainger, Jim Sturgess, Ambika Mod, and Beatrice Cohen

Created by: Catherine Moulton

s a nondescript station wagon snakes through the sun-kissed dirt roads of Southern France, thumps from the trunk of the car are barely audible over the blaring cicadas. Outside a remote villa, the trunk opens, and we meet nine-year-old Lucia Blix (Beatrice Cohen), who squints through the sunlight to ask her captor, “Who are you?” That’s how we’re welcomed into the world of The Stolen Girl, a show that, in a sea of missing-child crime dramas from the U.K., stands out initially because of its setup: Lucia’s disappearance is not a question of who’s responsible but why.

The first episode then jumps back in time to before the kidnapping. Harried mother Elisa Blix (Denise Gough) is late to pick Lucia up from school—again—and meets Rebecca Walsh (Holliday Grainger) and her daughter, Josie, both of whom Lucia has taken an instant shine to. A quick flash of charm from Rebecca and some pestering from the kids swiftly seals the deal for a sleepover. But when Elisa and husband Fred (Jim Sturgess) get to Rebecca’s lavish house the next morning, a cleaner answers the door and explains that no one lives there. It’s an Airbnb, and it hasn’t been rented out for weeks. So begins the high-profile search for Lucia and Rebecca, who the police curiously have no record of ever existing.

In its first couple of hours, The Stolen Girl doesn’t tread much new ground as the frantic Elisa chases down every immediate lead. Rebecca is like a ghost and seems to know just where to stand so her face is never picked up by CCTV. And Fred is hiding some sleazy secrets of his own, as lawyer husbands in thrillers are preternaturally inclined to do. Meanwhile, a well-meaning if overzealous journalist, Selma Desai (Ambika Mod), is eager to get to the bottom of things to the annoyance of the police and, later, Elisa. It turns out Elisa has long-buried secrets, too, some of which involve a refreshingly offbeat red- and pink-clad cult in a small English village.

Then there’s Rebecca herself, whose mission and motives become clearer as the search intensifies back in England. Grainger, who recently left her mark in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, is excellent as the curtain is slowly pulled back on Rebecca, who’s neither a victim nor a villain. It’s this kind of paradoxical character work that makes The Stolen Girl irresistibly entertaining, even if it’s to a tune we already know. Gough in particular is outstanding, showing the complicated range viewers know she’s capable of after her turn as the multilayered Imperial Officer Dedra Meero in Andor. Elisa is on a noble quest, but there’s a darkness beneath her tenacity that, early on, hints that she set certain events in motion long before Lucia vanished.

The miniseries is based on the 2020 novel Playdate by Alex Dahl, an American-Norwegian author whose Nordic background is evident in the number of twisty noir flourishes the story takes as it barrels toward a plausible, albeit slightly toothless, resolution.

The Stolen Girl is a cut above the vast majority of missing-child thrillers that streamers, and audiences, evidently can’t get enough of, and it really starts pulling its punches in the home stretch. It’s a shame, however, that this story requires Gough and Grainger to be kept apart for the bulk of it. They’re tremendous together, first playing tentative friends and, later, rivals on either side of a wrenching, impossible collision course that began a long time ago.

The Stolen Girl deploys its bag of tricks impressively. Lucia’s vanishing is the thrust of the story, but there are plenty of smaller narratives running through that one big question. Selma’s rigorous, impatient investigation into Elisa’s background turns up some well-timed wrinkles and a couple of amusing side quests to the increasing despair of her editor and the police, who’d really appreciate if they could be the ones solving this, thank you very much. Mod, fresh off a small role in Steven Soderbergh’s latest caper Black Bag and a lead one the breezy Netflix hit One Day, has a bright future. And Sturgess, who played the opposite main role in the other adaptation of One Day in 2011 (there’s a saloon trivia question waiting to happen) relishes in shedding his heartthrob skin. The skeletons in Fred’s closet aren’t all that surprising, but sometimes the inevitable is just as devastating as the unexpected.

But the unexpected rears its head again and again. In its more frustrating moments, The Stolen Girl can occasionally give the sense it has its eye on dropping the next twist to put you on the wrong path rather than keeping its mysteries taut. Still, coming in at just five 45-ish-minute episodes, it doesn’t stick around long enough to become a slog. It will be easy for such a miniseries to get lost in the streaming shuffle, but for those looking for a fleet, twisty distraction, The Stolen Girl won’t leave anyone feeling robbed.

– Courtesy: avclub.com

“The Stolen Girl is a cut above the vast majority of missing-child thrillers that streamers, and audiences, evidently can’t get enough of, and it really starts pulling its punches in the home stretch. It’s a shame, however, that this story requires Gough and Grainger to be kept apart for the bulk of it. They’re tremendous together, first playing tentative friends and, later, rivals on either side of a wrenching, impossible collision course that began a long time ago. The Stolen Girl can occasionally give the sense it has its eye on dropping the next twist to put you on the wrong path rather than keeping its mysteries taut. It will be easy for such a miniseries to get lost in the streaming shuffle, but for those looking for a fleet, twisty distraction, The Stolen Girl won’t leave anyone feeling robbed.”

Rating system: *Not on your life * ½ If you really must waste your time ** Hardly worth the bother ** ½ Okay for a slow afternoon only *** Good enough for a look see *** ½ Recommended viewing **** Don’t miss it **** ½ Almost perfect ***** Perfection