The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann - Netflix
There’s always been a conflict between the media’s need to inform and its desire to make money.
And if we’re truthful, there’s often been a lot of hiding behind ‘the pursuit of the public good’ as media organisations gorge themselves in fulfilling the public’s desires.
The disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann in Portugal in 2007 unleashed this conflict in a way not seen since the death of Princess Diana.
There was a confluence of circumstances which made the McCann story unmissable - a beautiful little girl, parents who were trying to do the right thing, an astonishing disappearance in a beautiful holiday resort and a fear shared by all families.
Undoubtedly, almost everybody in the British and Portuguese media believed they were doing their best to help the situation and find Gerry and Kate McCann’s daughter
But it seems obvious now that the massive reporting presence in Praia da Luz hindered rather than helped.
It was a help, obviously, in the sense that the world very quickly came to know that a little girl had been abducted and her image was everywhere.
However, the case of Robert Murat (well explained in the Netflix documentary) showed how things could go wrong very quickly.
Not dissimilar to the days after the IRA Birmingham pub bombs, the Portuguese police were under huge pressure to advance the case. While in Birmingham this meant picking up some Irish lads and framing them for the killings, in Luz it meant going after someone who ‘looked’ like a paedophile.
Bizarrely this adjudication was made by a group of British reporters in the pub after a day spent working the story in Luz.
Murat, who was helping out the search team and media by acting as a translator was a “bit strange”, had a funny eye, his marriage had broken up in England and he had a daughter a similar age.
Almost unbelievably this bar room talk turned into a police statement when one of the reporters contacted detectives with her concerns.
Without any additional evidence, this led to the arrest of Murat, his mother and a Russian man who had been building a website for his estate agency business. His cousin’s hotel was searched and Murat was followed. His house was bugged, searched, scanned for voids and his garden partially excavated. He was named as an ‘arguido’, an official suspect, before being subsequently exonerated.
Almost 12 years later, we have an eight-part Netflix documentary which has been made without the cooperation of the McCann family
I haven’t completed the full eight hours, but thus far there are no additional insights or new information. It is astonishingly detailed. The first episode covers just 24 hours after the abduction.
Its purpose it seems is to fill the need of Netflix subscribers for another documentary as gripping as Making a Murderer. It failed on all accounts.
***
Harry’s Heroes: The Full English, UTV, Monday and Tuesday at 9pm
Reality TV has finally delivered something worth watching.
Harry’s Heroes, the story of overweight, former England international footballers coming together to take on the Germans, was brilliant.
Never mind that it was conceived as a vehicle for the burgeoning TV career of Harry Redknapp (72) after being crowned King of the I’m a Celebrity jungle before Christmas.
Redknapp, who was once tipped to be England manager, finally gets a chance to manage his country only his players are in their 50s and seriously unfit. This was the era when footballers went to the pub and the bookies after training and this lot, including Robbie Fowler and Paul Merson, have paid the price.
There is, however, a touching honesty about their mistakes and a blokey camaraderie not often seen on TV.
