So public was the police condemnation of Kate and Gerry McCann in the wake of their daughter Madeleine’s disappearance in 2007 from a holiday apartment in Praia de Luz, that suspicion has seemed to cling to them ever since, fuelling years of conjecture. Media reporting, too, has at times slid into sensationalism.
This latest true-crime drama from 5 – whose previous reconstructions have included the Soham murders and the scandal surrounding Huw Edwards – returns to the moment that narrative first took hold: when Kate (played by Laura Bayston) was formally declared an “arguida”, or suspect.
Rather than rewinding to the events leading up to the discovery of Madeleine’s empty bed on 3 May, we first encounter Kate four months into the investigation, hollowed out by grief and relentless scrutiny, as she’s summoned for another meeting with Portuguese detectives.
Progress has stalled, leads are sketchy and no arrests have been made. Yet it quickly becomes clear that Inspectors Joao Carlos (Hugo Nicolau) and Ricardo Paiva (Miguel Freire) are no longer searching for an outside culprit but attempting to implicate Kate herself.
What follows is a succession of interviews – crafted from investigators’ notes rather than verbatim transcripts, as the sessions were not audio recorded – that escalate rapidly from procedural to accusatory.
Shot in a murky greenish light and framed through tight, enclosing angles, the scenes place Kate under an almost claustrophobic pressure, forcing her into a posture of self-preservation. Yet because the camera rarely leaves the interrogation room, the emphasis on questioning can start to feel less like a deliberate stylistic choice and more like a cost-saving necessity.
Glimpses of the wider investigation are fleeting: a sniffer dog detecting traces of blood in a car boot, crime-scene officers rifling through books in the McCanns’ apartment, Gerry (James Robinson) expressing frustration with the tactics of family lawyer Carlos Pinto De Abreu (Carlos Agualusa).
Had the drama spent more time showing how the case was being litigated in the media and absorbed by an often-censorious public, its impact might have been greater.
Even so, it’s startling to realise just how close events came to a charge, especially given the questionable evidence and the fact that the McCanns were cleared the following year.
View oEmbed on the source websiteThe drama is at its most compelling when Kate is offered a reduced sentence in exchange for confessing to accidentally killing her daughter and concealing the body. In that moment, the ordeal takes on an even darker dimension as she realises that detectives have stopped searching for Madeleine’s abductor altogether.
Ultimately, the drama’s narrow focus leaves the wider context out of reach, with everything post-2007 relegated to on-screen captions. Yet that concentration on one flashpoint also sharpens something more internal.
In watching Kate condemn herself for leaving her children alone in the apartment – and admit that the pain is one she will carry for the rest of her life – we sense that, for all the accusations levelled in her direction, the harsher tribunal may be the one she conducts against herself.
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Under Suspicion: Kate McCann is available to watch on 5.
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