This article contains spoilers for ‘Gone‘
In Gone, ITV’s police thriller that came to an end last night, storytelling was as much about silence as what was spoken. “I’ve done thrillers before, but I’ve never done a psychological thriller – where everything they’re not saying is so vivid and so visceral,” says Eve Myles, who starred as underestimated, overlooked Detective Annie Cassidy. “With Annie we certainly end up somewhere unexpected,” she continues. “Viewers don’t expect to get to know the different layers of this character in the way that they do.”
We first met Annie as she was embarking on a new investigation – the disappearance of Sarah Polly, a teacher at prestigious boarding school, St Bart’s, where her rigid, buttoned-up husband Michael (David Morrissey) was the headteacher. When Sarah’s body was discovered in nearby woods, Michael found himself in the frame for her murder. Initially frustrated by her assigned role as Family Liaison Officer rather than lead investigator, Annie ultimately used her proximity to Michael, and his daughter Alana (another teacher at St Bart’s, played by Emma Appleton), to solve the case.
Based on real-life detective Julie Mackay, who consulted on the show, Annie revealed disarming depth over the series’ six episodes. “The first thing I wrote on the script at the top was, ‘How do I make everybody see the ghost?’” says Myles. “Because she’s like a ghost, just sort of observing, working and carving her own path.”
As Gone unfolded, that path intersected with the investigation in ways that were as compelling as they were surprising. Her tentative rekindling of her abusive marriage to controlling fellow cop Craig Stanhope (Peter McDonald) – exemplifying the threat to women posed by the men closest to them, as with Sarah Polly – was one of the series’ most chilling threads, both written and played with extraordinary subtlety. “I loved how we dramatised that coercive, damaging, controlling, ugly relationship. It was done with such nuance, and it really creeped me out how normal it almost seemed,” says Myles.
Annie’s relationship with suspect Michael becomes deeper and more complex (Photo: James Pardon /ITV)“I’ve had so many messages on Instagram from women who have found themselves in that predicament,” she continues, illuminating the storyline’s impact – one which evidently cut both ways: “I can’t actually tell you how profoundly moving [those messages are], what that’s done to me.”
Further compounding her character’s complexity, it was arguably Annie’s drive to see the good in seemingly irredeemable men that meant she perceived Michael’s innocence. “[Annie and Michael] find something in each other, and they sort of fix each other,” says Myles of their uniquely reciprocal dynamic. “David [Morrissey] and I talked about it, that they didn’t need anything from each other, and so they become very equal,” she explains. “That was Annie’s way in – if she could get into Michael, she could get into the case.”
As Annie discovered, Sarah’s killer was neither her husband nor her lover (slimy Stephen Sedgewick, father of the school’s top rugby player) but another teacher, Rory Bowman (Rupert Evans), whose long-standing infatuation with Sarah was uncovered at the series’ crescendo, when Annie realised a key found at the crime scene fitted his front door.
An ex-pupil of the school himself, Rory was emblematic of the toxic cocktail of entitlement and emotional neediness bestowed by childhoods at institutions like St Bart’s. “What was really prominent to me was, a lot of [the story] was about privilege, how that affects and defines us – especially our young people, to have that sort of privilege and to be locked away somewhere,” says Myles. “Michael is locked away – not only in the school, not only in his house and in his marriage, but within himself,” she continued. “He’s completely unable to let anybody in, because that’s how he works.”
That pathological reticence had dire consequences: while Michael didn’t kill Sarah, he nonetheless blamed himself – specifically, his years of emotional coldness – for her death. And whether or not that self-reproach was merited, it was another commonality between him and Annie. In Annie’s case, it was an historic disappearance – of Tina Bradley eight years earlier – that haunted her; in fact, the agony of leaving the mystery unsolved was one of her primary motivators. “The shame of not finding Tina, and what that does to you as a detective – it’s crippling,” says Myles. “It’s almost what wakes her up every morning – that need to get justice, in particular for Carol [Tina’s mum].”
Detective Annie Cassidy revealed disarming depth over the series’ six episodes (Photo: James Pardon/ITV)Unfortunately for Annie – though happily for viewers, who will have relished watching Myles portray her with such masterful precision – her guilt reached far beyond one cold case. “[Annie is] constantly feeling like she’s failed,” says Myles. “She’s failed Carol, she failed Tina; she failed her husband because she couldn’t be the wife he wanted her to be… So she’s got her private battles,” she says. “And I just wanted to, gently, move them around like pieces on a chessboard.”
As Gone reached its denouement, all those motivators coalesced. With Sarah’s killer apprehended, Annie headed to the police station, where Craig was not only waiting for her but brandishing a new forensic report he’d organised into Tina’s case. “Of course he’s there, wanting to take control of the situation, of her,” says Myles. Yet, following advice from Michael, Annie stood up to Craig, telling him that their relationship was over at long last: “She finds that strength for the first time, really, in her life – and that’s the influence that Michael has given her,” she notes.
“You’d never think at the top of the series that those two would have that moment together, and that understanding, that respect for one another,” continues Myles. “It stops being prime suspect and detective, and becomes about two human beings whose lives have both spiralled out of control.”
While a show’s ending inevitably colours the process of making it, Myles does her best not to focus on that resolution before she has to. “I desperately always try to play what is on the page, because then you just hold yourself in a moment and react honestly,” she says. “The last thing you want in a thriller is to know too much about how you get to the end, because even subconsciously, it’s there,” she explains. “So I try not to know what I’m going to get to until I really need to.”
Despite Rory’s arrest and Annie’s triumphant rejection of Craig, Gone’s ending offered little in the way of finality – we’re under no illusion that her ex was the type to leave Annie’s life quietly, while Tina’s case remained tantalisingly unresolved. Can we expect to continue their stories, perhaps in a second season?
“Annie is somebody that could just keep on going, because what they’ve set up there in that world, and that character, is a brilliant thing that has endless possibilities,” says Myles. “I never put my eggs in any sort of basket, never mind one – I’m always really grateful that I get to tell a story in the first place. But this feels like there’s definitely legs and, you know, the possibility of many, many, many more series.”
‘Gone’ is streaming on ITVX
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