I won't go into any details because you should watch it and make up your mind.The acting is brilliant, you would hardly believe that Gemma Whelan was the same person that played Yara Greyjoy in "Game of Thrones".The story was basically play by numbers, you didn't really learn anything new if you saw this on the news.I do think this could have been a three parter. We didn't really see the aftermath other than a few shouty bits at the end. I really wanted to see the impact it had on the town at the end, but it seemed to end rather suddenly.It would have been nice to see what happened when she came out of prison, but we saw nothing of this.I will repeat however that the acting was top notch, but I was left a little disappointed with the story.

Found this disappointing. It told the story from mostly From Karen Matthews friend, Julie's viewpoint. It didn't tell us anything new from what was reported at the time. It didn't show much of the police investigation. The ending felt like an afterthought. Trying to make excuses for what she did and suggesting it was everyone else fault than her own. I did agree that in all honesty she wasn't evil just misguided and was overwhelmed by what happened. While she wanted and enjoyed the attention, once the estate was involved it was hard to find a way out.However it did not ever really show her in a bad light or confirm she was involved. It also didn't show how the estate felt about being lied too when they were so passionate about finding the girl.It was acted well but it didn't tell us anything you can't read about on the internet. It also seemed to be saying that if you are poor then you can't be held responsible for your actions. The estate was also shown as all wonderful people. I have worked for Kirklees Council in Dewsbury on a number of occasions. While there are some lovely people there, some people are really awful. A shame this was so much of a lecture and waste of a decent cast.

The kidnapping of Shannon Mathews is a pitifully grim true life story of Modern Britain . Shannon was a nine year old child who went missing from the Moorside housing estate in Dewsbury . After a month long manhunt and frantic fundraising she was eventually found at the house of one Michael Donovon , uncle of Craig Meehan – the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl's mother, Karen Matthews.As the mystery quickly unravelled it turned out the "kidnapping" was a huge hoax carried out by Karen Matthews , Donovon and Meehan in order to raise money for themselves and they all ended up in jail for it . This two part BBC drama tells the story of the case I came in to this drama with an open mind but found myself rather irritated the way the story is told . The narrative is seen through the eyes of Matthews friend Julie Bushby as she unfailing pulls out all the stops to find the lost child and coming to terms with the betrayal of friendship and friendship continuing in the face of adversity and according to a caption at the end Bushby still stayed in contact while Matthews served her sentence You have to question could the story not have been told better ? A case like this is ripe with ready made black comedy . For example the real life case saw a psychic called Joe Power who somewhat prophetically claimed someone called "Mike" might be behind the kidnapping . "Might" as in "Might not be involved" if Joe had to guard his back as in this case by not noticing the abduction was faked . On a similar note the case was directly inspired by the case of Madeleine McCann whose disappearance led to millions of pounds being raised by a gullible , naïve public but this aspect as a motive is entirely downplayed for whatever reason . It is a relatively well made and acted drama but trying to paint greedy , ignorant , selfish lumpen proles who'd traumatized their own kin in order to make money in a sympathetic light doesn't work for me I'm afraid

I've only seen the first episode but I can be confident that my rating isn't going to change and neither will my opinion of this program.Firstly, don't watch it if you think you're going to find out anything you didn't already know from TV and newspaper reports. Don't watch it if you want to see sweeping camera shots of Dewsbury and the surrounding countryside. It wasn't filmed there.You'll watch this because it was written by Neil Mckay who has written some great TV in the past. He's written TV shows about the Moors Murderers and Fred & Rose West. You have to remember that when shows like this are written there will be some added drama that didn't actually happen so as to sex up the show.The problem with this show is that it's impossible to sex up so there's lots of dialogue showing the "can-do" attitude of the residents of The Moorside estate. Whether much of it actually happened is questionable, however, the actresses did spend time with their real-life counterparts so there will be some true to life scenes and dialogue.For me, it was exactly what I expected from a show on this subject.