A Spin-Off of The Missing (2014) about onetime-detective, now private investigator Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) who is hired to investigate crime, especially missing people with the help of his wife Celia (Anastasia Hille).
The first series aired in January 2019. Baptiste is embroiled in the secret life of a British expat, Edward Stratton (Tom Hollander), and the criminal underworld of an Amsterdam sex-trafficking gang, after Stratton claims that his niece has gone missing.
The second series aired in summer 2021 and centres on British ambassador Emma Chambers (Fiona Shaw), whose sons are apparently abducted after her husband is shot and killed while on vacation in Hungary. Baptiste, now struggling with the death of his daughter Sara, unravels a far-reaching conspiracy involving the right wing.
Tropes:
- Abusive Offspring: Alex shot Emma and paralyzed her.
- Beard of Sorrow: In Series 2, Baptiste grows a thick bushy beard in the later time period after the death of his daughter and the botched Chambers investigation.
- Cheated Death, Died Anyway:
- Baptiste's daughter Sara survived her drug addiction in The Missing (2014) after Baptiste got her sent to prison. She then recuperated, only to relapse and die at the opening of Season 2.
- Natalie fled the Romanians who sex trafficked her to Amsterdam and fled the brothel after stealing money from them to escape the assassin they sent after her, fleeing into the water, only to get her leg tangled in a rope by the houseboat and drown anyway.
- Convenient Photograph: When Zsofia was talking to the Gomorrah recruit (expecting him to identify Kamilla as Gomorrah), she's lucky that she happens to show him a picture with her husband Michael in the background, who he identifies as the real Gomorrah.
- Deathly Unmasking: After the Hungarian shooting in Series 2, Baptiste unmasks the Gomorrah shooter as Emma's older son Alex.
- Disabled Means Helpless: Emma's paralysis in the shooting. She even reassures Kamilla that she's "no threat" specifically because she's in a wheelchair.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Stratton helped Natalie steal money to try and help her escape, even though he barely knew her, because she reminded him of his own daughter.
- Happy Ending Override: Although the ending of Season 1 was more bittersweet than happy (Natalie is dead, Baptiste wasn't able to save her sister from a Fate Worse than Death in sex trafficking, but Baptiste, Edward, and their families are all safe and the Romanian hitman is out of commission). However, Season 2 quickly undoes the "happy for Baptiste" part of that: Baptiste's daughter Sara relapses on drugs after the events of Season 1 and dies of a drug overdose, leaving her daughter orphaned and Baptiste and Celia separated and devastated.
- Just Hit Him: Will opts to blast Baptiste in the face with a fire extinguisher rather than hit him with it, even though that would've incapacitated him.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Fiona Shaw's accent slips between English and Irish.
- Oppressive Immigration Enforcement: Hungarian radical Right-Wing politician Kamilla Agoston features heavily in the second season, who is campaigning heavily on strict anti-immigrant policies and is presented as a cold-hearted bigot. Following their investigations Baptiste and Zsófia Arslan come to suspect that she is secretly Gomorrah, the mastermind behind the neo-Nazi anti-immigrant terrorists they are after. She isn't, but she does approve of their brutal murders and happily exploits them for her own capital.
- Platonic Prostitution: Stratton didn't visit sex worker Natalie for sex, but because she reminded him of his dead daughter Lucy.
- Replacement Goldfish: Natalie is one for Lucy as far as Edward is concerned.
- Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: The Romanians in Series 1, to the point where the assassin is known simply as "the Romanian" for episodes.
- Samus Is a Girl:
- Played straight in Season 1. Kim Vogel is a transwoman; prior to transitioning, she was the vicious, now-assumed-dead Romanian gangland boss that everybody is looking for.
- Inverted in Season 2. Baptiste, Emma, and Zsofia conclude that Kamilla is Gomorrah due to their reactionary right-wing views, and the use of her speech as a decoy for the terrorist attack. It's actually her husband, Martin.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Zsofia Arslan's father is a kindly shopkeeper who even takes care of a teenage boy after he catches him firebombing his store, looking after him, mentoring him, and even giving him thousands to start anew and get an education. He got murdered by the man's friends for his troubles.
