Masterful Cinema

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I've never written an IMDB review before but this series I had high hopes for but unfortunately the roles of the CID female and male officers are totally pathetic. Oh and the psychologist. For a start this is supposed to be present day and the two CID officers and psychologist who are left to 'handle' the investigation don't seem to have any idea of how to treat a victim or at least one of this sort. You would've thought on such a high profile case and in such extreme circumstances the Police would have specialists in this field to help the victim come to terms with being free. (You'd hope they would!) The CID officers performances because of the lack of knowledge is such so it's painful to watch especially the female officer perform her script. I just keep saying to myself (in my head) "REALLY, are they really getting you to say such things???", as she is basically accusing Ivy of being an accomplice of some sort. I mean hello 'Stockholm syndrome' !??!?! That was discovered in 1972. Ivy was captured when she was 13 a MINOR. Her role has totally ruined the watchablity of series, I'm only continuing to watch to find because I hope there will be a good ending. It's tough though!

It's captivating and makes you want to continue to come back for the next episode just to see how it all pans out but it is all so depressing. The problem is that every single character has no redeeming features, they are all unlikeable with the men being the weakest. The most common word used must be'sorry', every one seems to be sorry for one thing or another and they continue to make apologies just about every five to ten minutes.

I actually looked this up to see how old it is because I too was shocked at the insensitivity of the police towards a person who has endured obvious horrors. I thought maybe it was from many years ago before law enforcement understood anything about kidnap victims. It was made clear in the first episodes that she had experienced multiple physical attacks in addition to captivity, demonstrating that she had survived many forms of torture. Even if they did need information, in real life, dealing a person who had survived her ordeal, they would not terrorize her in the process of the interrogation - locking her in rooms and threatening her with incarceration - dahhhh!! I thought it was good generally up until now and I'll keep watching, but this twist in the story line is annoying.

Really enjoyed this mini series..... Ivy was very convincing as a 26yr old who'd been shut away for 13 years. Acting was great, all the characters were good. The very end scene was so disappointing though. Almost as if the writer just had to end the story in two minutes flat. Everything was plausible except that final scene with the explosion. A fire without the explosion would have been more convincing. More of an effort could have been made there.Being familiar with Bristol made it doubly enjoyable as i saw familiar places on screen.Other than that... it's good. well done.