The Missing: Truth in the darkest places

Actor James Nesbitt stars in The Missing.

James Nesbitt tells Vanessa Thorpe how his role as a father grieving after his child disappears helped him face his own anxieties.

For a television audience to be prepared to journey into a parent's bleakest nightmare, they need to feel in safe, serious hands. Actor James Nesbitt will attempt to take viewers to a very dark place with the New Zealand screening of the drama series The Missing, an eight-part thriller that tells the story of the disappearance of a young child on a family holiday.

Nesbitt, 49, says the role was the most involving he had taken on since the film Bloody Sunday, and that the team behind The Missing have earned the opportunity to confront people with such a difficult story because of the care taken to be truthful.

The actor, who recently starred as Bofur in The Hobbit films, says although British television drama has become obsessed with crime and violence, The Missing can be defended as a properly considered, human tale.

"We are becoming inured to the horror in a lot of these shows, so whether it will be too much for viewers is an interesting question. I believe if these stories are told truthfully, then audiences are prepared to go there. But not if they are told exploitatively," he says.

Nesbitt, who is also on New Zealand screens as police commissioner Richard Miller in Danny Boyle's satirical drama Babylon, says in The Missing he immersed himself in the role of grieving father Tony Hughes, going so far as to pin police reports and photographs to the walls of the room he stayed in during filming in Belgium. "Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfil some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves."

Although the BBC drama is not based directly on recent events, the plot of The Missing echoes real-life cases such as that of Madeleine McCann. "Whatever the BBC and the writers say, there are going to be parallels there in cases we have all heard about. It takes you right back there. And it does make you want to hug your own children to you," Nesbitt says.

As the drama unfolds, jumping between dual time frames, the fragility of family happiness becomes a strong theme.

"It is not a conscious plan, but behind all these dramas the notion that we should not be taking things for granted is out there, I am sure," he says, adding that good drama, although a commercial entertainment, still has the ability to show viewers the best and the worst human qualities.

"It is a pretty truthful bit of writing and I think that is why people will go with it.

"It shows the ramifications for other people of something like that happening."

Nesbitt, who has spoken in the past about his own struggle to keep family life going - he reportedly separated last year from Sonia Forbes-Adam, his wife of 19 years - also says he has asked himself whether he chooses roles that suit his own state of mind.

"My stock answer is that I am always led to a part by good writing, but as I get older and I get more into self-examination, I wonder if I pick things to reflect where I am. Not as escapism, but I will play a role that gives me an opportunity to face things or talk about things that I am too much in denial about in my own life."

As the father of two girls, Nesbitt adds he had hoped that being a parent might help him with The Missing. "I had thought I would be able to draw on that to locate the character, but I wasn't able to get myself to think about it directly. It was better in the end to concentrate on finding Tony and then I wasn't having to imagine losing one of my daughters. For me, the experience of this role was most akin to the one I had making Bloody Sunday."

The series was written by Harry and Jack Williams, the two sons of novelist and dramatist Nigel Williams, and directed by Tom Shankland.

"The writing is sometimes simple, but very compelling, and part of what works is also the unusual fact of having one director all the way through. That's not done often at all. And without sounding too actorish, I hope, it made it feel a little like doing a play in that we were all working together throughout. I also felt I got to know and like my character, with all his faults, and so I felt there was a responsibility towards him, too."

Filming in Brussels allowed the cast and crew to focus on the story, he says. "It meant we were all disconnected from our own lives, and that reflected the story, too, where a man is dealing with a system he doesn't understand and where he does not speak the language."

Living in an apartment, rather than the hotel where his character stays, Nesbitt surrounded himself with suggestive props. "I did put all the things on the walls that Tony would have had there, including police reports. It was a great privilege to have that time to put into a role. Getting any work is amazing, but something which is actually a challenge really is."

After two years filming with Jackson in New Zealand, the actor says he feels he has re-entered the real world. "Coming to a part like this now, it is a very good reminder of what a realistic drama can be and why you do it. The Missing takes its audiences very seriously and realises there are plenty of good dramas out there. I just hope people watch it."

As for Babylon, he says the current series is even stronger than the pilot episode. "It has found itself. It is a brilliant look at the world of policing when everywhere they go there are either TV cameras or phones filming them. It gets at both the difficulty of all that and the sexiness of it, for want of a better word."

He is, he expects, already an over-familiar face for some. "Most people seem to know who I am and when I meet someone who doesn't, it is a relief, but also quite annoying, if I am honest. The main thing is I don't want to have regrets about the way I play a character."

Who: James Nesbitt
What: The Missing
When: TV One. Sunday 9.35pm

- Observer