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The kidnapping of Shannon Mathews is a pitifully grim true life story of Modern Britain . Shannon was a nine year old child who went missing from the Moorside housing estate in Dewsbury . After a month long manhunt and frantic fundraising she was eventually found at the house of one Michael Donovon , uncle of Craig Meehan – the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl's mother, Karen Matthews.As the mystery quickly unravelled it turned out the "kidnapping" was a huge hoax carried out by Karen Matthews , Donovon and Meehan in order to raise money for themselves and they all ended up in jail for it . This two part BBC drama tells the story of the case
I came in to this drama with an open mind but found myself rather irritated the way the story is told . The narrative is seen through the eyes of Matthews friend Julie Bushby as she unfailing pulls out all the stops to find the lost child and coming to terms with the betrayal of friendship and friendship continuing in the face of adversity and according to a caption at the end Bushby still stayed in contact while Matthews served her sentence
You have to question could the story not have been told better ? A case like this is ripe with ready made black comedy . For example the real life case saw a psychic called Joe Power who somewhat prophetically claimed someone called "Mike" might be behind the kidnapping . "Might" as in "Might not be involved" if Joe had to guard his back as in this case by not noticing the abduction was faked . On a similar note the case was directly inspired by the case of Madeleine McCann whose disappearance led to millions of pounds being raised by a gullible , naïve public but this aspect as a motive is entirely downplayed for whatever reason . It is a relatively well made and acted drama but trying to paint greedy , ignorant , selfish lumpen proles who'd traumatized their own kin in order to make money in a sympathetic light doesn't work for me I'm afraid
score 4/10
Theo Robertson 15 February 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3640150/ |
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14-2-2021 11:31:04