The review is over – the most interesting drama we will see this year | TV and radio

WThe hat is gone? Maybe it’s easier to list things that no longer exist, if only to give ourselves something to cling to when familiar trappings start to waver, fault lines appear and it all starts to slide into a pit of churning anxiety.

So! Some of the things that are no longer there: a sitcom, a musical, a cooking show by sockless men with ham-like forearms, something about whales, Richard Osman’s House of Games. Yes, George “Hijack” Kay’s six-part series is ostensibly a crime drama about the disappearance of the wealthy wife of a private school principal. But that’s just a promotion to pass through the front door; Behind these compliments lie many more complex and difficult things. Things like the nature of guilt and codependency, the burden of professional expectations, preoccupied schoolchildren, the banality of evil, and unusually large Dalmatians discovering corpses in the clearings (“Casper…?! Oh my God”). It’s a very reminiscent work: something huge, confusing, and cleverly elusive. Every tense second is grotesquely weighted with the feeling that something profound and/or terrible is about to emerge from the fern and strike us in our preconceptions.

To Bristol, where a school rugby match is in full swing, the camera pans through a forest of straining thighs as Michael Polley (David Morrissey), the sturdy-backed headmaster of St Bartholomew’s, watches expressionlessly from the sidelines. Michael’s team wins: Hoza! But what is this? The teacher seems strangely unmoved by the boys’ victory, and is similarly unfazed when he discovers, later that afternoon, that his wife Sarah is missing from their chocolate box hut.

Night falls. Still no Sarah. Daughter Alana (Emma Appleton) is distraught. “Dad,” she says hesitantly. “I’m afraid. Did you argue, did you…argue?” silence.

“We didn’t argue,” he finally answered, his back turned. The clock is ticking. The gap is widening. “We never do that.”

The police were eventually informed, reluctantly.

“How are you?” asks the attentive and dry-witted DS Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles). “You seem… very quiet.”

Michael answers: “I have 160 students about to take exams.” “These predicted grades will determine which universities they will go to. The fact that their principal’s wife has not been seen for 24 hours should not worry them.”

Annie narrows her eyes. “I mean there’s a lot that’s not right,” she later told a colleague.

There definitely is. But what? Guilt? Or the kind of restraint that surely went the way of the dinosaurs? The irascible Michael, with his pre-war haircut and carefully pressed waistcoat, is resolutely and fragilely unreadable. It’s not exactly empty (this is, after all, David Morrissey; few actors could do more with a fleeting nasal movement), but it’s very much a closed book. I went to great lengths to close his emotional vault. It is very likely that Michael strangled her with garlic before shutting her down with bullets. He seems oblivious to the discomfort of those around him. Or is this just another form of control? “He’s the headmaster,” observes Annie’s rumpled, gorgeous friend Carol (the always wonderful Claire Higgins). “He’ll be used to having everything his own way.”

“Hmm,” answers Annie, who has also seen this species before (and, in fact, lived with it). Speaking of which, here comes former magician Craig (Peter MacDonald), whose efforts to win back Annie may not be as cheerful as they seem.

Other things happen. Schoolboy Dylan (Billy Barratt) seems burdened by something. A cold case involving a missing teenager resurfaces from the past. There are surviving aerial shots of dense forests: not the common kind, with its fly-tipped latrines, but the affordable kind; The kind where dog walkers wave to each other and corpses have the decency to wear Barbour.

He went on to make us work for our dinner. Clues arrive at the table slowly and from unexpected angles. Things appear, and – suddenly – our preconceived notions are flung back into the nearest forest (watch out, Casper!)

The suspense builds, keeps building, and then – tension! – Build more. How long before the rubber settles again? “Don’t say,” he went, waving more terrible things at us before scurrying back into the bushes.

If there’s a tauter, quieter, or more interesting drama this year, I’ll eat my mortar board with chips.