What to watch tonight: Missed Call is 'a powerful story about every mother's worst fear'

A missed call from your child in the dead of the night. They're not at home and you don't know where they are. The people you trusted to look after them don't seem to care - and don't want to help. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, and it’s the spine-tingling premise behind Channel 5’s new boxset, Missed Call.

The five-part series follows Joanna Scanlan (Riot Women, The Larkins), who plays a single mother, Sarah, horrified to discover her 17-year-old daughter, Katie, has gone missing while on a school exchange trip in a village in the south of France.

That one missed call leads to Joanna’s character, Sarah, ringing around and getting no answers. Where is her daughter? Why does no one want to help her find her? And just what secrets are they hiding in this seemingly idyllic village?

Spurred on by the 'lioness love for your child', Sarah heads off to the village of Saint-Michel to conduct her own investigations.

There, she's horrified to realise Katie's disappearance is dismissed as a typical teenage disappearance - but Sarah knows something is wrong and it doesn’t take long for her to realise that 'everybody is potentially against her'.

This includes a cast of intriguing characters including the powerful French family hosting her daughter, the secretive police lieutenant, and the debonair Englishman, played by My Family star Robert Lindsay.

Not only do they all seemingly have secrets, it becomes apparent that everyone she meets in this 'stunningly beautiful but weirdly unsettling' village could be involved in her daughter’s disappearance - including her own boyfriend, played by Sherlock star Rupert Graves.

His character, Jason, was the perfect man. Sarah saw no chinks in his armour, until she spots him putting a suspicious looking box on the coach that takes her daughter and her friends to the French village.

Joanna is keen for viewers to immerse themselves in the 'twisty, well-plotted mystery' that not only has viewers wondering what the villagers are hiding, but what secrets Katie, played by Emily Coates, might have been keeping, too.

The fact that her 17-year-old might not be the perfect daughter she had hoped is where the drama becomes 'relatable - and terrifying - for parents', Joanna shared with TV Times.

'That feeling you don’t know what’s actually been going on in your teen’s life. It really shakes your world.'

Despite the odds stacked against her, and feeling like a fish out of water in this hostile town, racing against the clock to find Katie, Joanna shared 'the faith and hope Sarah has throughout that her daughter is going to be found is the engine of the story'.

Is that hope misplaced? Can Sarah find her daughter? There’s only one way to find out. All five episodes of Missed Call are available to stream on Channel 5 now.