Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Episodes: 10
Duration: 42 min (per episode)
Absentia: Season 1 (DVD) – Series Review
What would you do if your wife and mother of your child went missing, and was presumed dead? To be honest, we don’t really know what we would do. In Nick Durand’s case, he moved on after years of trying to find out who took his wife Emily, and he married Alice, with whom he finally seems to have found a happy life again. Until Emily shows up again…
Emily Byrne (Stana Katic) used to be an FBI agent, and a good one for that matter. When she sunk her teeth into something, you bet she would book results. That is until she disappeared. For years, her colleagues and family thought her dead, even though a body was never found. Her husband Nick Durand (Patrick Heusinger), also an FBI agent, eventually moved on and got remarried to Alice (Cara Theobold), and her son Flynn (Patrick McAuley) even calls Alice mom now. One night, Nick gets a phone call, where a mysterious man tells him that Emily is still alive, and that he has the chance to save her. Nick rushes to his car and drives as fast as he can to the place the man told him about. There, he finds Emily, but she’s trapped in a tank full of water. If he doesn’t do something fast, she will drown. Luckily, Nick manages to break the lock, and he saves Emily.
If you thought this was the happy ending, you’re sorely mistaken. Now that Emily is back, a lot of questions arise. First of all, the man who got convicted for her abduction and murder, Conrad Harlow (Richard Brake), is released from prison, as he clearly didn’t kill her, and thus has to be retried for abduction. But if he didn’t do it, who locked Emily in that tank? Harlow is still in on it somehow, but he clearly didn’t work alone, which means Emily is in danger, as Harlow’s accomplice is still out there.
For Nick, these are hard times too, as he desperately wants to find out who did this, and is over the moon that Emily is back, but at the same time he has to make things work between Emily and Alice, and figure out what he wants himself. The happy family that Nick, Alice and Flynn became, is totally shaken with Emily’s return, and everybody will have to adjust to a life with Emily now.
From the beginning you get the feeling that the story is going to be quite grim and complicated, and indeed it is. Not only the fact that Emily and everyone around her have to adjust to a new life, after already having to adjust to a life without her, but also the fact that the real culprit is still out there, offer some decent storylines that keep this series quite interesting throughout. We were a bit afraid that the series would turn out to be one big disillusion for Emily, and that it would get scary quite often, but instead, it gets exciting, certainly when Emily starts to take matters into her own hands.
Acting is pretty decent in this series. Stana Katic does a very decent job as Emily Byrne. As a viewer, you truly get to feel for her, even though at the same time you can’t be entirely sure either of her own involvement in the whole thing. Patrick Heusinger didn’t have an easy job either. His character is torn between the mother of his son, and the woman he married after he thought his wife was dead. Truth be told, he does a fantastic job as well. Frankly, we didn’t have anything to complain about in the acting department.
This DVD release doesn’t come with any extras, but to be honest, it’s good that it doesn’t. We don’t say this very often, but in this case, it actually benefits the series. After watching it, it feels done, and extras such as deleted scenes or a behind the scenes even, would make the whole grim feeling go away in an instant. Instead, you’re now still left with a mysterious feeling, something that the cast and crew managed to continue during the whole series, and even after the credits of the final episode start to roll.
Conclusion
Absentia is one of those series where you’ll get drawn in right from the start. The acting is good, but also the storyline keeps being interesting, which isn’t such an easy thing to do without making things overly complicated or stretched. We really did love this series, but as a second season has already been announced, we do wonder if it would actually benefit from it. We sure hope it will.
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