Last Seen review: Apple TV’s dad-on-the-line thriller
Patrick Brammall plays an emergency dispatcher who thinks a panicked caller might be his missing daughter. Apple TV’s Australian six-parter is a gripping set-up, with a few familiar wobbles.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 24 October 2026
Contents
Most of us have one phone call we dread. For the parents in TV crime dramas it is always the same one, and it usually comes at 3am. Last Seen flips it round. Its hero is the man who answers those calls for a living, and one night the voice on the other end might belong to the daughter he lost more than ten years ago.
That is a cracking hook for a Wednesday night. Apple TV’s new Australian six-parter knows it, and spends a lot of its energy keeping you leaning towards the screen. The question for anyone with limited evenings and too many subscriptions is whether the rest of the series lives up to that first call.
Premiere2026-09-09
GenreCrime, Drama, Mystery
CastPatrick Brammall, Chloe Jean Lourdes, Brendan Cowell, Maxine Peake
Seasons1 season · 6 episodes
ChannelApple TV
Rated15
Watch onApple TV
76%
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A call nobody should have to take
Ian Ridley, played by Patrick Brammall, used to be a police officer. He now works as an emergency dispatcher in Port McKenna, a fictional and very scenic coastal town in Australia. More than a decade ago his three-year-old daughter was taken from her bedroom and never found. Ian has never accepted that she’s gone, and the people around him have mostly stopped humouring him.
Then a frantic call comes in from a teenage girl, and Ian becomes convinced it is her. From there he stops at nothing to find her, and plenty of people would rather he left well alone. That is as far as I’ll go. Twists are the main currency of this genre, and you deserve to spend them yourself.
The series is loosely based on The Dispatcher, a 2011 novel by Ryan David Jahn. If the job title doesn’t mean much to you, think of the person who picks up when you dial 999 and has to keep you talking while help is sent. Ian takes that job home with him in the worst possible way.
Who’s in it and who’s behind it
Brammall is the big draw. Plenty of people know him as the co-creator and co-star of Colin From Accounts, the lovely, scruffy Australian comedy that became a word-of-mouth hit over here. This role asks him for none of that. Ian is a wound in human form, all grey stubble and stubbornness, and Brammall plays him with a restless desperation that stays on the right side of hysterical.
Chloe Jean Lourdes, Brendan Cowell, Daniel Henshall and Jessica Wren complete the main Australian cast. Henshall in particular has a knack for making you uneasy simply by entering a room, which is useful in a story where everyone in town is a potential suspect. The surprise name for UK viewers is Maxine Peake. One of our most dependable actors turning up in an Australian coastal mystery is the kind of casting that makes you sit up, and she does not waste her scenes.
It runs to a single season of six episodes, which is just about the right length for a missing-child thriller. Long enough to go down a couple of rabbit holes, short enough that you won’t need a spreadsheet of suspects. It carries a UK 15 certificate, which is fair given the subject matter.
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What works, and what wobbles
The setting does a lot of the heavy lifting. Port McKenna looks like a postcard, with surf, sunshine and big skies, and the contrast with what it’s hiding gives the show its uneasy charge. British TV has done the missing-child story to death on grey estates and windswept moors. Seeing the same grief in a place built for holidays makes it feel stranger and lonelier.
The family material is where it’s strongest. Last Seen is at its best when it lets Ian’s obsession play out on the people around him: the relationships it has worn down, the friends who are tired of hearing the same theory, and the way a decade of not knowing can hollow out a household. You feel how exhausting he must be to live with, and that is braver than making him a straightforward hero.
The bit that hurts isn’t the mystery of where she went. It’s watching what ten years of not knowing does to the people left behind.
The crime-thriller machinery is shakier. Anyone raised on British telly will recognise the pattern. The BBC’s The Missing, with James Nesbitt as a father who refuses to give up, set the template for the parent who knows better than the detectives. Netflix’s run of Harlan Coben adaptations, from Fool Me Once to Missing You, has since turned it into a production line of shifty neighbours and buried secrets. Last Seen ticks plenty of those boxes. The parent no one believes, the community keeping secrets, the police who would rather close the file. If you’ve seen a few of these, some of the beats will arrive before the characters do.
To be fair, that is partly the appeal. Familiar does not mean dull, and a premise this simple and this nasty gets a lot of mileage out of keeping you guessing about one voice on a phone line.
What the critics are saying
The early reviews point the same way. Writing for The AV Club, Saloni Gajjar argues that the show works better as a family saga than as a crime thriller, and that Brammall elevates it. She puts it closer to a Harlan Coben adaptation than to prestige missing-child drama, and also notes that the Australian setting and accents set it apart from the pack.
That roughly matches my own feeling. The performances and the grief are worth the trip. The whodunnit mechanics are serviceable rather than special. No aggregate scores have settled yet, so for now it is word of mouth and early reviews.
Where to watch Last Seen in the UK
Last Seen premieres on Apple TV (the streamer formerly known as Apple TV+) on 9 September 2026. It is an Apple original, so you won’t find it on Netflix, Sky or the terrestrial catch-up services. A subscription costs around £9.99 a month in the UK. If you’re not already signed up, there’s an old-fashioned trick: binge the six episodes and some of Apple’s other crime shows in a month, then cancel before the second payment leaves your account.
You can watch it on the Apple TV app on most smart TVs, games consoles, streaming sticks and phones. You don’t need an iPhone, despite what the Apple logo might suggest.
Verdict
Last Seen has a terrific hook, a sun-bleached setting that makes its darkness feel colder, and a raw, committed lead performance from Patrick Brammall, with a welcome turn from Maxine Peake. As a family drama about grief that won’t let go, it lands. As a mystery, it leans on beats that fans of The Missing and the Harlan Coben shows will spot coming. It’s well worth a month of Apple TV for crime-drama regulars and anyone who likes their thrillers with a heart, but don’t expect it to reinvent the genre.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
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