Thirteen

A dishevelled-looking young woman runs along a suburban street and into a phone box.  She says she is Ivy Moxam, kidnapped from the street thirteen years ago as a thirteen-year-old girl and missing ever since.

Aired originally on BBC3, the youth-oriented channel that has recently moved online, this taps into today's bogeyman, namely the patient, organised and utterly deranged keeper of girls in cellars.  Similar ground was covered in the 2010 novel 'Room' which is now a film too.  This takes a decent stab at portraying the unimaginable post-nightmare readjustment, with Ivy (Jodie Comer) displaying bewilderment, relief and sorrow while trying to come to terms with what has happened to her.

The enormous impact of her emergence after such a long absence on her family and friends is also made apparent, and convincingly played, but the show is really Jodie Comer's as the girl who has lost her anonymity along with everything else.  The writing pays attention to detail, with Ivy more than a one-dimensional victim - she has a believable manipulative streak, contradictions in her behaviour and story and a possible case of Stockholm syndrome.  Her sister's doubt of her identity is quickly ruled out by DNA, but this doesn't lessen the mystery of what has happened to her, how it has changed her or indeed her personality before her disappearance (she was playing truant on the day she was abducted).  The identity of her captor is quickly established, but he is on the run, and apparently worked at Ivy's school.  A timely reminder that the sensational stories in the news are far from ending with a reunion.