Fugue States (1)

Two five-year-old twins, Cindy and Jason, vanish from their home in 1990. A nationwide search turns up nothing. Thirteen years later a young man is admitted to hospital after a car accident and identified by DNA as Jason Murphy, except he can remember nothing of his life before, which includes where his sister has been all this time. So Boyd and the team set out to find her, working from the one witness who knows least.

That's a cruel premise, done well. The amnesia makes Jason both the case's centre and its blank spot; Joe Armstrong plays him as a young man quietly rattled by being a missing person who didn't know he was missing. Boyd doesn't believe the accident was luck either. The driver who hit Jason had crossed paths with him shortly before the original abduction, and Boyd doesn't think coincidence explains that. Then things get worse: Jason disappears again, and a police raid mounted during the hunt for Cindy ends tragically. Part one leaves those consequences hanging.

There's a parallel thread that earns its place. Mel Silver is trying to find her biological mother, which gives the hour its quieter questions about blood and identity while the main plot handles the louder ones. The two stories rhyme without being forced together.

Ben Bolt directed, with Barbara Machin and Ed Whitmore writing. Trevor Eve leads as Boyd, alongside Sue Johnston's Grace Foley, Holly Aird's Frankie Wharton, Claire Goose's Amelia Silver and Wil Johnson's DI Spencer Jordan. Sean McGinley plays Dr Donald Roper, Ray Stevenson is Dr Tim Faulkner, Maimie McCoy plays Sarah Faulkner and Patrick O'Kane is Greg Murphy.

Missing-children cases are where this series does its most affecting work, because the grief never gets a resolution day. This one opens the wound twice over, once in 1990 and once on a hospital ward, and part two will have some explaining to do.