There are plenty of thrillers on streaming TV and cable that feel like they’re purposely being obtuse. The audience feels tricked in these cases, kept more in the dark than the participants in the story simply for the purposes of extending the story over six or whatever number of episodes the series has. But other shows use fragmented storytelling in a much more organic-seeming way, which is what we see with a new German series on Netflix.
Opening Shot: A man counts out steps as he walks outside. Inside, two kids and their mom play.
The Gist: When the man who’s counting his steps comes into the house — the door is locked from the outside — all three people line up and present their hands to him. Both the girl and the boy have clean hands and fingers. The woman is shaking in fear, and shows a burn on her hand.
Later we see the woman and the girl running through the woods in nightgowns. Off-screen, there’s a thud; the woman is hit by a car, which runs off. In the ambulance, when the girl named Hannah (Naila Schuberth), says her mom’s name is Lena (Kim Riedle), the mom’s heart rate goes up, as if from fear. Hannah also tells the EMTs with confidence that her mother’s blood type is AB negative. Lena’s son Christopher (Sammy Schrein) is still back at the house.
At the hospital, a nurse watches Hannah while Lena is in surgery. Hannah talks about all of the weird rules that she and her mother have to live by at home. During the surgery, the blood type info Hannah gave was wrong, putting Lena at risk, plus Lena’s thoughts while under anesthesia made it seem like it would be better if she let go and rested from the nightmare she was living. She ends up pulling through, but loses her spleen in the process.
Aida Kurt (Haley Louise Jones), the detective working on the hit-and-run, comes to the hospital to question Lena and Hannah. When Hannah starts talking to a hospital therapist, Aida comes in and thinks she can connect with the girl. Most of Hannah’s responses are cryptic and weird, and she asks for the nurse to come back. But she also draws the dark and windowless room where Christopher is still located.
In the meantime, Gerd Bühling (Hans Löw), a CID agent who was assigned to the case of a missing girl named Lena Beck 13 years ago, sees news of the hit and run and calls Lena’s parents, Matthias and Karin Beck (Justus von Dohnányi, Julika Jenkins). He thinks that the woman in the hospital might very well be their Lena, but he cautions them to wait until he looks into it. However, the Becks ignore that and make the drive in the middle of the night, causing a disruption in the hospital as Lena recovers and Aida tries to figure out just what Lena and Hannah were running from.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Dear Child (Original title: Liebes Kind) has the creepiness factor of a show like The Missing.
Our Take: Based on the book by Romy Hausmann, Dear Child sets up a scenario where the viewer is going to be reconstructing what happened to Lena and Hannah along with Aida and Gerd. Director and writer Isabel Kleefeld adapted the book by breaking down the story by presending the perspectives of each of its participants.
For the most part, what we’re hearing in the first episode is Hannah’s view of their lives. And it’s so strange and fragmented, it’s fascinating and frustrating all at once. We have no idea who this person that not only trapped Lena for all of these years but forced her into having two children. And given the fact that Hannah is 13, the horrors of Lena’s captivity started as soon as she was taken.
The fragmented storytelling is an effective device because it forces viewers into a similar mode as the people who are in the story and trying to figure out what happened. Naila Schuberth’s performance as the precocious Hannah brings us into her world, a world where she automatically presents her hands whenever an adult enters a room and where some of the strange and scary stuff that went on were just a fact of life to her.
What we’re not sure about is how the Becks and Gerd will factor in. It’s pretty apparent that the Lena in the hospital is the Lena Beck that went missing 13 years ago. But the way the first episode ends, there seems to be some denial on the Becks part that their daughter is now the injured thirtysomething woman in that hospital bed. It brings up the question of just what the circumstances surrounding Lena’s disappearance actually are. How young was she when she disappeared? And is the mystery person who kept her locked away actually the person who took her?
Again, these are questions that in some shows seem like they’re being held back from the viewers instead of being true organically-created mysteries. But given the storytelling method deployed here, those mysteries don’t feel like they’re being purposely held back. We just hope they lead to twists in the story that make sense instead of a bunch of red herrings.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After Matthias angrily leaves Lena’s room, claiming that the woman there isn’t their daughter, Karin sees Hannah and screams Lena’s name. That seems to be impossible, right? Meanwhile, we hear Lena in voice over saying she hears everything while she lies unconscious “like a dead lump of meat. Lena, you know what he did to me.”
Sleeper Star: Haley Louise Jones’ character of Aida Kurt will likely be the person who pieces all of this together, with Gerd’s help. We already see that she’s a pretty effective investigator just by how she questions Hannah.
Most Pilot-y Line: The nurse reports to Aida that Hannah gave her last name as “Goliath”, as if that was true, then adds that Hannah told her she just picked the name. Seems like a different take on that line was warranted.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Dear Child presents its audience with a confounding puzzle and fragmented perspectives, but in a way that draws viewers in instead of ticking them off, which happens less often than you might think.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.