'Gone' Is Good

I appreciate a zippy whodunit with an all-star cast (see Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movies), those with great sleights of hand (The Prestige), an action-packed whodunit series (Slow Horses), or even a funny one (Only Murders in the Building).

But sometimes, you don’t need all the fancy bells and whistles, big laughs, cool action sequences, or magic. Gone, which just wrapped its six-episode season on Britbox, is a grand, old-fashioned, character-driven mystery that will keep you guessing right until the very end, and you invest in the main characters just enough that you actually care about who did it.

Gone stars a couple of veteran British actors, David Morrissey (The Walking Dead) and Eve Myles (Torchwood). Morrissey plays Michael Polly, the headmaster of a posh private school. He’s stern. He has a stiff upper lip. He doesn’t tolerate hooligans, and he’s so devoted to the job that when his wife goes missing, he just keeps doing it (red flag!).

Eve Myles plays DS Annie Cassidy, originally put on the case as a detective but eventually assigned to be the family liaison, basically the person who keeps an eye on Michael Polly as they investigate Sarah Polly’s disappearance and, soon enough, her murder. But even her death doesn’t immediately dissuade Michael from tending to his headmaster duties, and he only gives it up when the administration makes him, reasoning that it’s not a good look for the school if their leader is the lead suspect in a murder.

But he’s not the only one, and as secrets come out, a couple of other suspects come into focus. I won’t say too much about that, because Gone is largely propelled by the parcelling out of secrets, except to say that by the end, there are a very small number of suspects, and the audience is left torn over who it could have been. And even as the evidence against Michael mounts, and despite what a prig he is, the audience is left hoping it’s not Michael, even as all the arrows seem to be pointing in his direction.

It’s a British series, and the genre is filled with enough bleak endings, that you never really know, do you? Gone comes from George Kay (Lupin, Killing Eve), and it’s very much in the Britbox mold: stolid, competent, and compelling, even if it’s not quite riveting television. It’s not likely to gain a lot of buzz outside of the Britbox subreddit, but it’s exactly the kind of slow-burn mystery that keeps subscribers to the streamer coming back. If you’ve already burned through the flashier stuff, Gone is a reliable, satisfying way to spend six hours.