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Last Seen review: This Apple TV drama is one of the best crime thrillers of the year
Handsomely filmed, sensitively written and confidently structured, this Australian series starring Patrick Brammall is seriously good.
Apple TV
- Jack Seale
Published: Wednesday, 9 September 2026 at 8:00 am
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A star rating of 5 out of 5.
One of the best crime thrillers of the year comes to us from Australia, and from a premise that sounds just like all the others: in a small coastal community, an emergency-call handler whose infant daughter was kidnapped 11 years ago receives a call from a teenager that he thinks is her.
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The police dispatcher in question is Ian Ridley, who was a detective before tragedy caused his personal life to fall apart. Playing him is Patrick Brammall, who now has a dramatic breakthrough here to go with his turn as the love interest in The Devil Wears Prada 2 and the comedy stardom he won with Colin from Accounts (all three series of which are on BBC iPlayer).
Yes, the bloke from Colin from Accounts is the lead in a drama. But his casting is one of countless subtle ways in which Last Seen is so much better than its genre’s average. Brammall can do bleak desperation, capturing both the resilience of a man who has had to learn not to be defined by grief, and the terrible brittleness of someone who could so easily snap. But he also lets flashes of humour poke through the gloom, making Ian’s predicament all the more affecting because we can see vestiges of the happy, funny bloke he used to be.
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It’s a classic example of comic and dramatic acting not just being equally difficult and commendable, but actually being the same thing: Ian’s rage and bewilderment, as he rails obsessively against colleagues and loved ones who don’t believe his daughter can possibly still be alive, are the emotions a sitcom protagonist might feel, flipped into darkness.
Handsomely filmed, sensitively written and confidently structured so that we don't rush for the obvious next story beat until the necessary character work has been done – the fateful emergency call doesn’t happen until the end of episode two – Last Seen backs Brammall up with a host of able supporting players, the surprise casting being Maxine Peake in an important but not dominant role. But everyone in it is quietly superb, from Jessica Wren as Ian’s ex-wife Debbie, who was as broken as Ian was by the disappearance of little Maggie but has been more successful in putting herself back together, to Brendan Cowell as the villain, Henry, a deluded man trying to keep an impossible secret.
As for Maggie herself, newcomer Chloe Jean Lourdes excels in a tricky role, balancing the hysteria of an extraordinary situation with the relatability of a 14-year-old girl who is, quite naturally, questioning everything her parents have ever told her.
Last Seen isn’t immune to crime drama tropes: the explanation for exactly what happened to Maggie and why will come to you immediately if you’ve seen any similar story before, but somehow doesn’t seem to occur to anyone whose job it is to investigate, for example. There’s a neat coincidence, too, at the heart of the story that pushes the concept of a tight community where everyone knows everyone else to its limit.
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Such things are the price you pay, however, for a narrative that propels you from one tense, delicate situation to the next at just the right speed, and our intelligence is never insulted because every element of Last Seen has careful thought behind it.
As it morphs from delicate grief drama to breakneck thriller, it could so easily drown in implausibles, but the characters’ psychology is always on point. Nor does it hold back from the most difficult parts of the tale: a brilliantly ambiguous final shot caps off a story that could never possibly have had a neatly happy ending, because wherever Ian and Maggie end up, neither of them can get her stolen childhood back. Be warned, also, that episode five has a death scene in it that is filmed from afar and more implied than graphic, but is still deeply haunting.
As the show’s heart, Brammall is effortlessly likeable enough for us to invest completely in what happens to him, despite knowing it will be bittersweet at best. Last Seen is seriously good.
Last Seen is available to watch now on Apple TV.
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Authors
Jack Seale
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