Jack Armistead
Bob Hoskins
Jack Armistead
Overview
Rebellious and irreverent, Captain Jack is a man on a mission. Come hell or high water, he's determined to follow in the footsteps of Whitby's unsung hero, Captain Scoresby, who set sail from the town bound for the Arctic in the 18th Century. Assembling a crew of oddballs and misfits, the cantankerous captain weighs anchor and voyages into the unknown. His ship has been certified unseaworthy, and he's pursued by the Royal Navy, NATO and journalists, but nothing is going to stop Captain Jack fulfilling his wildest dream.
Cast
Tessa
Sadie Frost
Tessa
Eunice Pickles
Gemma Jones
Eunice Pickles
Phoebe
Anna Massey
Phoebe
Andy Watts
Peter McDonald
Andy Watts
Emmett
David Troughton
Emmett
Barbara Bostock
Maureen Lipman
Barbara Bostock
Mr. Lancing
Patrick Malahide
Mr. Lancing
Deirdre
Michele Dotrice
Deirdre
Toby
Nick Stringer
Toby
1st Holiday Maker
Trevor Bannister
1st Holiday Maker
2nd Holiday Maker
Paul Butterworth
2nd Holiday Maker
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Ghost in the Machine
In the modern landscape of crime drama, the "missing woman" trope has been exhausted to the point of parody. We know the rhythm: the frantic search, the grieving spouse, the inevitable corpse. But *Absentia*, the 2017 series directed by Oded Ruskin, dares to ask a far more uncomfortable question: What happens when the corpse wakes up and walks home? This is not a story about a disappearance; it is a story about the violence of return. It is a psychological brutalist piece that strips away the comfort of closure, suggesting that sometimes, being "found" is just the beginning of being lost.
Oded Ruskin, bringing a distinctively cold, European sensibility from his work on *False Flag*, rejects the glossy warmth typical of American procedurals. Filmed in Bulgaria to double for Boston, the series possesses an alien, detached visual quality. The city feels gray, hollowed out, and oppressive—a reflection of the protagonist’s internal state. Ruskin’s camera does not observe; it intrudes. He favors tight, claustrophobic framing that traps the characters within the lens, mirroring the physical entrapment of Emily Byrne (Stana Katic). The sound design is equally sparse, replacing melodramatic swells with a suffocating silence that forces the audience to sit with the discomfort of a family shattered by a miracle.
At the center of this wreckage is Stana Katic, who sheds the polished armor of her *Castle* years to deliver a feral, raw performance. As Emily Byrne, an FBI agent declared dead in absentia only to surface six years later with no memory of her captivity, Katic is a woman excavated rather than rescued. The script does not treat her return as a triumph. Instead, it is a logistical and emotional catastrophe. Her husband has remarried; her son calls another woman "Mom." Katic plays Emily not as a victim seeking pity, but as a wounded animal—unpredictable, dangerous, and profoundly out of place in the civilized world she left behind.
The series is most potent when it lingers on the domestic horror of replacement. The "thriller" elements—the hunt for the serial killer, the questions of who held Emily—are merely the scaffolding for a tragedy about identity. The true violence here is not physical torture, but the realization that life went on. The scenes between Emily and her son are excruciatingly quiet, capturing the chasm between biological connection and the reality of absence. The narrative forces us to empathize with the "new wife," Alice, complicating our loyalties. We want Emily to have her life back, but the space she occupied has been filled. To reclaim her existence, she must effectively destroy the happiness her family built on her grave.
Ultimately, *Absentia* transcends its genre trappings by refusing to offer a clean reintegration. It suggests that trauma is not a hurdle to be cleared, but a permanent alteration of the self. While the plot eventually succumbs to the requisite twists of a conspiracy thriller, the show’s soul remains in its bleak, atmospheric study of a woman haunting her own life. It is a chilling reminder that the past is not a foreign country; it is a rising tide, and sometimes, even those who learn to swim never quite reach the shore.
In the modern landscape of crime drama, the "missing woman" trope has been exhausted to the point of parody. We know the rhythm: the frantic search, the grieving spouse, the inevitable corpse. But *Absentia*, the 2017 series directed by Oded Ruskin, dares to ask a far more uncomfortable question: What happens when the corpse wakes up and walks home? This is not a story about a disappearance; it is a story about the violence of return. It is a psychological brutalist piece that strips away the comfort of closure, suggesting that sometimes, being "found" is just the beginning of being lost.
Oded Ruskin, bringing a distinctively cold, European sensibility from his work on *False Flag*, rejects the glossy warmth typical of American procedurals. Filmed in Bulgaria to double for Boston, the series possesses an alien, detached visual quality. The city feels gray, hollowed out, and oppressive—a reflection of the protagonist’s internal state. Ruskin’s camera does not observe; it intrudes. He favors tight, claustrophobic framing that traps the characters within the lens, mirroring the physical entrapment of Emily Byrne (Stana Katic). The sound design is equally sparse, replacing melodramatic swells with a suffocating silence that forces the audience to sit with the discomfort of a family shattered by a miracle.
At the center of this wreckage is Stana Katic, who sheds the polished armor of her *Castle* years to deliver a feral, raw performance. As Emily Byrne, an FBI agent declared dead in absentia only to surface six years later with no memory of her captivity, Katic is a woman excavated rather than rescued. The script does not treat her return as a triumph. Instead, it is a logistical and emotional catastrophe. Her husband has remarried; her son calls another woman "Mom." Katic plays Emily not as a victim seeking pity, but as a wounded animal—unpredictable, dangerous, and profoundly out of place in the civilized world she left behind.
The series is most potent when it lingers on the domestic horror of replacement. The "thriller" elements—the hunt for the serial killer, the questions of who held Emily—are merely the scaffolding for a tragedy about identity. The true violence here is not physical torture, but the realization that life went on. The scenes between Emily and her son are excruciatingly quiet, capturing the chasm between biological connection and the reality of absence. The narrative forces us to empathize with the "new wife," Alice, complicating our loyalties. We want Emily to have her life back, but the space she occupied has been filled. To reclaim her existence, she must effectively destroy the happiness her family built on her grave.
Ultimately, *Absentia* transcends its genre trappings by refusing to offer a clean reintegration. It suggests that trauma is not a hurdle to be cleared, but a permanent alteration of the self. While the plot eventually succumbs to the requisite twists of a conspiracy thriller, the show’s soul remains in its bleak, atmospheric study of a woman haunting her own life. It is a chilling reminder that the past is not a foreign country; it is a rising tide, and sometimes, even those who learn to swim never quite reach the shore.