The Vanishings is an appalling insult to its real-life victims ...Middle East

Anyone who lived in Ireland in the 90s will recall the disappearance of a number of young women in an 80-mile radius to the south of Dublin – the so-called “vanishing triangle”. They were generally in their late teens or early 20s, travelling alone, and seemed to have simply winked out of existence. The majority of the cases remain unsolved. The assumption is that at least some were victims of the same serial killer.

These terrible events occurred long before the cliché of the murdered woman became beloved of the thriller genre. The fetishised fallen cheerleader of Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer, was, at that point, an outlier. But after the success of “dead girl” dramas such as True Detective, The Killing, Mare Of Easttown and countless others, there is a grim inevitably to The Vanishings, an appallingly crass and exploitative whodunnit loosely based on those disappearances from 30 years ago.

How loosely? Well, consider that the first episode opens with a young woman missing her bus from Dublin and hitchhiking to a lonely petrol station. She’s talking on a payphone to her sister when she takes a lift from a stranger – and is never seen again. This carries horrible echoes of the disappearance in 1995 of Josephine Dullard.

Immediately, the opening disclaimer of The Vanishings – that it is “inspired by real events… but not intended to be an accurate portrayal of real people or real events” – is contradicted. If you are going to repackage actual suffering as a cosy crime for a channel-surfing midweek audience, at least have the courage to own it.

Real-life murders can make for compelling drama. But only if approached with the correct spirit of diligence and a resolve to do right by the victims and their families. For instance, when ITV revisited the Yorkshire Ripper murders with The Long Shadow in 2023, it did so from the perspective of the murdered women. Shlock and sensationalism were kept at arm’s length.

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No such sensitivity is found in The Vanishings, which aired in Ireland last year as The Vanishing Triangle and is in juicy potboiler mode from the outset. It stars Normal People’s India Mullen as plucky journalist Lisa Wallace, whose mother was murdered 20 years earlier, and when she writes a front-page story about the ordeal, she receives a creepy card from the killer. Amidst his ramblings, he hints that he is also responsible for the abduction of Amy Reynolds (Gráinne Good) from that lonely petrol station.

One thing The Vanishings gets right is the initial indifference of the Irish police to the disappearances of the women in the 90s. Even three decades ago, they were a relic from an older Ireland; their misogynistic assumption was that the girls were off having a good time and had neglected to tell their parents.

That prejudice is reflected in the oikish cops we meet in the drama. The exception is dashing detective David Burkely – played by Downton Abbey’s Allen Leech as a thoroughly modern 21st-century dad somehow trapped in the era of Blur v Oasis.

He believes Amy’s family are correct to be worried, his misgivings about the official attitude toward the missing woman influenced by the fact that he himself has a teenage daughter. Lisa has the same concerns, and journalist and detective soon team up.

But rather than trying to do justice to the real victims, the story spools off into noirish nonsense. There is a tacked-on subplot involving Lisa’s criminal dad. Meanwhile, the killer taunts the reporter by sending her stylishly grainy polaroids of his latest captive, which resemble outtakes from a Nine Inch Nails video.

It’s Father Ted does Silence of the Lambs. The women whose deaths remain unsolved deserve better.

‘The Vanishings’ is streaming on Channel 5

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