5 days that last forever

The series opens ominously enough. A boy shields his eyes from the sun with one hand. He’s scanning the street beyond for something he can’t find.

And true to form, 5 Days is about people you look for but can’t find — a young mother and her two children who mysteriously disappear without a trace. Okay, okay. It’s not something new. You’ve seen this plot in missing person dramas like NBC’s Kidnapped and Fox’s Vanished.

But hold your horses and wait till the events unfold (the series starts tomorrow, May 9, and comes back a week after, May 16 on HBO Signature on SkyCable both at 10 p.m.). You meet intriguing characters like a husband who turns into a suspect, parents whose marriage is strained by their daughter’s disappearance,an angry stepdaughter, a woman who attaches herself to the family for reasons you will slowly find out.

Hugh Bonneville (Mansfield Park, Notting Hill, Tomorrow Never Dies, Tsunami: The Aftermath), who plays the senior investigating officer to the case sees more in this whodunit than meets the eye.

“It shows how crimes have an impact on various aspects of society, and not just on the family. It’s more about individual family and relationships more than crime solving,” he says.

In other words, 5 Days is not just another whodunit that stops on its tracks once the case is solved. It goes beyond. It looks at how one event creates a chain effect and how connected we are to one another, even through things we never imagined would affect us.

If this sounds like gibberish, 5 Days will show you why it’s not. Notice, for instance, how the police are caught in a bind. Will they answer media’s questions? Or will they keep mum about it? The first safeguards the affected family’s privacy; the second may just solve the case.

That’s what Bonneville means when he says the events are like pebbles being dropped in a pond and having a rippling effect on the community. The challenge lies in taking the audience in a journey that has no easy results because “not everything is explained.”

It’s this veil of mystery that first attracted Bonneville to the Iain Barclay character. Like the series itself, Barclay is a puzzle waiting to be solved.

“He’s reserved. He’s not anti-social but he holds back,” observes Bonneville. And it’s this detachment that gives him an edge over the others..

As Bonneville declares, “Barclay is a good observer. He sees things from a distance. This makes him a good cop.”

Barclay’s detachment is a sharp contrast to the human drama that parades before him like a hard-to-ignore spectacle. And what a spectacle it is, bursting with drama, anger and tears, set in a bleak urban landscape.

The mournful music matches the feel of the series. The presence of hidden cameras in the highway where the children get lost gives an eerie Orwellian feel.

5 Days grips you with fear and foreboding. It makes you look at the person next to you and ask, “Should I trust him at all?” It makes you think, look deeper and ask questions before making your move.

In the sense, it has made its point.