I’ve had a few things on over the past couple of weeks, so unfortunately have neglected the blog a bit – je suis désolée! 😦

Now that everything’s back in order, here’s my review of episodes 5 and 6 of Disparue, the French crime series recently shown in the UK on BBC4.

If you haven’t seen these two episodes, you can catch up on BBC iPlayer.

Just to warn you though, there are a few spoilers during this review, so look away now if you haven’t seen the episodes yet!

I wrote about the third and fourth episodes here on my blog.

Or if you’d like to catch up on episodes one and two, why not check out my review here?

The episodes are available to watch here on the iPlayer but they expire tonight, so hurry! 🙂

The fifth and sixth episodes both move very quickly, with more facts still coming out about Léa’s disappearance.

The police now have a long list of suspects, each with their own possible motives for abducting Léa.

But how far can we depend on what the police already know?

One of the strong points of this series so far has been that, in each episode, it throws us red herrings mixed in with trustworthy titbits of evidence.

So how do we know who, and what information, to rely on?

What’s happened to Léa? If she’s still alive, where is she? And who is involved in her disappearance?

Léa’s family and friends confront these questions in the first of these two episodes before finding out devastating news. Their daughter’s body has been found.

Rose Molina, the teenage daughter of the brooding local police commandant, saw Léa’s body while relaxing with friends at a lake in Lyon.

This of course leads to questions between Rose’s divorced mother and her father, who she was staying with when she discovered Léa’s body.

Rose’s mother asks herself whether her daughter is safe in her father’s care. He seems to focus so much on work that he has barely any time to spend with her.

Léa’s family is also struggling to cope. Now that her body has been found, they know for certain that they will never see her again.

As they try to come to terms with this, they also have to find out about their daughter’s death.

How did it happen? Who did it? And why?

While they try to find the answers to these questions, new faces are coming up in the police’s search for suspects.

Among them are Nicolas Barraut (Johan Libéreau), who worked at Léa’s father’s restaurant and had a soft spot for her.

And there’s also her French teacher Matthias Tellier, who left a previous teaching job after starting a relationship with one of his teenage pupils.

In an attempt to find out who may have killed Léa, her father Julien downloads hundreds of photos of the concert that his daughter went to on the night she disappeared.

He painstakingly studies the face of every person on each of the photos, hoping to identify everyone who saw his daughter just before she went missing in case they can give more clues about her disappearance.

At the start of episode six however, all of the uncertainty and confusion of the previous episode seems to have gone.

The police are keen to close the case of Léa’s disappearance now that her body’s been found.

Detective Louvin, Commandant Molina’s boss in the Lyon police, believes that they have finally located Léa’s killer, after an incident involving one of the suspects at the end of episode five.

Molina, however, isn’t so sure. Convinced that they still have work to do before finding the killer, he eventually persuades to persuade Louvin to keep all lines of enquiry open.

And sure enough, near the end of the episode, the police persevere in their investigation and another suspect is arrested.

Away from the police enquiry, Léa’s family is busy with preparations for the birthday party of their youngest daughter Zoé.

And Léa’s mother Flo is very upset after her boss arranges a visit from a psychiatrist to help her come to terms with her daughter’s death.

She and her husband Julien find it harder and harder to comfort each other while they struggle to accept that Léa is no longer alive.

To her shock, Flo discovers Julien confiding in Anne, a woman who he once had an affair with, as she becomes closer to Benoît, one of her work colleagues. She then reveals something to Julien that further strains their relationship.

I thought this episode was particularly strong – it was fast-paced, exciting, and had just enough new information coming in to keep us guessing in time for the next two episodes, which will be the series finale.

Now, over to you – have you been watching The Disappearance?

Have you seen any other French TV series?

As always, let me know here in the comments below 🙂