David Morrissey in Gone: ITV’s six-part drama draws on a real detective’s cold-case work
ITV’s six-part crime drama Gone stars Eve Myles as Detective Annie Cassidy and david morrissey as Michael Polly, a private school headmaster who becomes the prime suspect in his wife Sarah’s disappearance; the series, partly inspired by the book To Hunt a Killer and the career of Detective Superintendent Julie Mackay, arrives on ITV and STV from Sunday 8th March at 9pm.
David Morrissey plays Michael Polly, an upstanding headteacher turned suspect
David Morrissey plays Michael Polly, an upstanding private school headteacher who is described in the drama as inscrutable and precise in his working life. In the six-part story Polly slowly becomes the prime suspect in his wife Sarah’s disappearance, and the plot sets up a tense cat-and-mouse as his habit for order meets Detective Annie Cassidy’s investigation.
Eve Myles’ Det Annie Cassidy inspired by a real detective
Eve Myles plays Detective Annie Cassidy; the Welsh actress is best known for roles in Broadchurch and Keeping Faith and also appears in credits listed as The Crow Girl, Hijack and Torchwood. The character of Annie Cassidy is inspired by the career of former detective Julie Mackay, and both Mackay and ITV crime correspondent Rob Murphy served as consultants on the series.
How the Melanie Road cold case fed the drama
The show was partly inspired by To Hunt a Killer, a book written by crime correspondent Robert Murphy about Det Supt Julie Mackay's 2009 cold-case review, 32 years after Melanie Road was murdered as she walked home from a nightclub in Bath in 1984. Det Supt MacKay reopened the case in 2009 after joining Avon and Somerset's cold case review team and pledged to Melanie’s mum that she would not stop until she found the killer; the investigation took six years and involved extracting modern DNA from primitive evidence.
Those inquiries led to a 2015 arrest of a young woman after she had a row with her boyfriend and broke his necklace; her DNA match ultimately pointed to a relative and then to Christopher Hampton. In 2016 Christopher Hampton, from Fishponds in Bristol, changed his plea to guilty at the start of his trial; he was jailed for life and must serve at least 22 years. Det Supt MacKay won awards for painstakingly solving the 32-year-long case.
Production, tone and supporting cast
Gone was filmed in and around Bristol last year and is set against the backdrop of a prestigious private school, a foreboding forest and the quiet sprawl of Bristol. The series was created by George Kay and directed by Richard Laxton; Kay has said the drama pits Eve Myles’s overlooked Detective Annie Cassidy against main suspect Michael Polly, played by the superb David Morrissey, in a story about privilege and prejudice.
The cast includes Emma Appleton as Sarah and Michael’s daughter Alana, who is a teacher at the school, plus Jennifer Macbeth, Arthur Hughes, Nicholas Nunn, Elliot Cowan, Billy Barrett, Rupert Evans, Jodie McNee, Oscar Batterham and Clare Higgins. The production team and writers describe the series as a fictional mystery that draws on real-life research and the book material.
When and where to watch Gone
Gone will air on ITV and STV from Sunday 8th March at 9pm. The television drama frames a fictional disappearance around themes drawn from the real-life investigation chronicled in To Hunt a Killer and the career and work of Julie Mackay, with input from both Julie MacKay and Rob Murphy as consultants.
The first episode debuts on Sunday 8th March at 9pm on ITV and STV, when viewers will see Eve Myles’s Detective Annie Cassidy begin to chip away at Michael Polly’s veneer.
