the missing
Julien Baptiste, the French detective in The Missing BBC

The anguish of a missing child is played out for yet another week in the gripping BBC1 thriller series, The Missing. Last week's episode left one too many stones unturned as the momentous series 2 – written by Harry and Jack Williams – continues to unravel in its darkest form.

Now we're slap, bang in the middle of the series, the mystery of Alice Webster will take an even more ominous, bone-rattling turn in tonight's (9 November) episode as the violence factor is amped up a few notches while it creeps into more sinister territory.

French detective Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) and Jorn's (Florian Bartholomai) investigation leads them further into Eckhausen, Germany, as they unearth the secrets of its conflicting German and British communities.

Meanwhile, the Wesbter family – who are at breaking point – drift further apart as they suffer from the freshly reopened wound of Alice's disappearance. Her brother Matthew (Jake Davies) ends up getting involved with violent thugs as the shaken father Sam (David Morrissey) seeks solace elsewhere.

But it appears that logical-thinking mother Gemma (Keeley Hawes) has her thinking cap on as she leads Eva and John into working together by following her lead – resulting in bringing the family one step closer to tracking down the missing girl after she vanished 11 years ago.

Once and for all, the elusive jigsaw begins to piece together, and while Sam and Gemma struggle to keep their marriage on course, detective Julien keeps his eye on the ball on his quest to discover what exactly happened in Iraq.

The Missing continues tonight at 9pm on BBC1.