Disappeared Review – Even Kaley Cuoco Can’t Save This Ridiculous Mystery | television

Fasten your seatbelt, buttercups! Three hours of stuffed nonsense divided into four 45-minute batches is about to come quickly.

Gone stars Kaley Cuoco, who rose to fame on The Big Bang Theory from 2007 to 2019 and then starred in The Flight Attendant a few years ago. Coco played an ordinary, albeit alcoholic, stewardess who finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, ensnared in an ever-deepening mystery, and then deadly danger. She found unexpected reserves of courage and resourcefulness and managed to stay half a step ahead of the bad guys until it was time for defeats and retribution all around.

In Disappeared, she plays Alice, an ordinary non-alcoholic archaeologist who finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and embroiled in an ever-deepening mystery, and then deadly danger. She has found unexpected reserves of courage and resourcefulness, and I believe she will succeed in staying half a step ahead of the bad guys until the time comes for defeats and retribution all around.

Alice has been carrying on a long-distance relationship with a pair of cheekbones named Tom (Sam Claflin) for the past four years. Something about the handsome medic she first met saving a group of women and children from bandits appealed to her and they would meet in hotel rooms around the world whenever the paths of their worldwide careers allowed. But now Alice has been offered the chance to settle down as a lecturer on Dusty Old Things (Vanished doesn’t care much about the script. The actors might as well hold up laminated cards to the screen that say Big Book of Planning the Second Script, Option 3a, and Get the Work Done Faster with Little Loss of Viewers’ Investment) at Princeton (Harvard is Option 3b). Will Tom join her? He hesitates but – yes, yes he will! They’ll do it right because they’re as hot as each other – I mean, they’re deeply in love.

To celebrate, he booked them a stay at a luxury hotel in Marseille. Alice’s so happy Tom – get this – disappears From the train carrying them there is Hélène, an investigative reporter (Karine Viard, a respected star in her native France but giving a performance so bizarre here, perhaps in disbelief), who happens to be on the train, helps Alice relay her concerns to the ticket inspector. But the ticket inspector rejects them while insisting that she does not enter a special booth the right size to contain a handsome doctor. Or maybe it’s full of laminated cards. Who can say?

There’s nothing left for Alice to arrive in Marseille and report Tom’s disappearance to an equally indifferent police inspector, Mr. Drax (Simon Abkarian), who believes that Tom may have been frightened by the idea of ​​settling down and fled between stations, as any normal man would do. Holy blue! Alice is properly annoyed now. In time, Helen is still there and reminds her that she is an archaeologist and can look for clues. In reality!

Alice soon searches through Tom’s belongings and finds dodgy hotel bills and phone records, as well as photos of a woman whose tattoos match his own. She tracks down his former colleague Alex Durand (Matthias Schweighofer), who provides more new information about her boyfriend, who is being chased by a man on a motorcycle, hears about suspicious deaths and is accused of murder. Then more happens, and more, until everyone decides enough is enough and everything stops.

The Flight Attendant was a lot of fun, infusing comedy into the events, giving the heroes some backstory, and keeping things tense and unpredictable just enough. And Coco was wonderful as a hot mess pulling herself together under duress. Vanished is a pale imitation that doesn’t give her anything to work with, even though she does a lot with a little and is always worth watching. Poor Claflin has even less to do. He disappears – obviously – most of the time, and is largely seen in faded flashbacks to the early days of their romance. The laminated cards could be pinned to a large board that read “Charming Heroic Love Interest Here” and no one was the wiser, as he waited for something that could build on his success as Billy Dunne in Daisy Jones and the Six.

If you’re having a particularly bad day, Vanished is light, silly, and distracting enough to soothe a divided soul. Other than that, let’s hope both heroes get a chance to appear in something much better next time.