Denise Gough will soon be back playing an intergalactic fascist baddy in season two of Star Wars spin-off Andor. But before setting the controls for a galaxy far, far away, the Wexford actor comes crashing down to earth in fun, flimsy kidnapped child potboiler, The Stolen Girl (Disney+ from Wednesday).
She plays Elisa, a private jet flight attendant who reluctantly agrees to a play date for her nine-year-old daughter with a new friend from school. As any parent will tell you, play dates are hell in pyjamas: not only do you have to put up with other people’s children, but you are also expected to interact with their parents. Isn’t that what screen time was invented for?
Still, little Lucia insists, so Elisa drops her off at pal Josie’s, where she meets the girl’s glamorous mum, Rebecca (Holliday Grainger). She is friendly and down to earth, except when Elisa tries to take a picture of Lucia and Josie, at which point she freaks out to an altogether unreasonable extent. But no matter – Elisa has a flight to catch and so leaves her daughter in the company of this stranger with a nice house and an aversion to cameras. What could go wrong?
Plenty, as we discover in a hokey romp set in Cheshire in the north of England, where almost every character is completely unlikeable and has entire wardrobes full of skeletons. Grainger’s Rebecca is obviously a nasty piece of work – she is, after all, introduced driving at speed with Lucia bunged in the boot. Then there is Jim Sturgess as Lucia’s dopey dad, Fred, who confesses to having had sex with a mysterious woman – who may or may not be Rebecca – over the phone. He is understandably apologetic – especially as it turns out his video-link paramour vowed revenge after he called time on the relationship. Should probably have mentioned it earlier, Fred!
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There are also question marks around Elisa, who is all over the place on Instagram yet whose past appears to have been carefully scrubbed. Has she changed her identity – and if so, why? That question is raised by a plucky journalist, Selma (Ambika Mod, best known for the TV adaptation of One Day – something she has in common with Sturgess, who played her character’s love interest in the 2011 movie version of the David Nicholls bestseller).
The Stolen Girl is adapted from the novel Playdate by Norwegian crime writer Alex Dahl, a book which arrives with the appropriately cheesy tagline: “It was meant to be your daughter’s first sleepover. Now it’s an abduction!”. True to its page-turner origins, it’s pacy, very silly and loaded with more twists than a party pack of Curly Wurlys. In other words, it is bingeable but disposable and a role that Gough – solid but never sensational as Elisa – will probably have forgotten five minutes after she filmed her final scenes.
