The Moorside

[NancyDonahue]

BBC dramatisation based on the kidnapping of Shannon Matthews. Starts Tuesday 7th February 9pm, starring Sheridan Smith.

Obviously a horrendous crime against a young child so I wasn't sure I'd want to watch, but it looks like it focuses on friends of the mother who headed up the search and barely features the child herself.

I love Sheridan Smith too so will give it a go.

Even if the police did have very grave suspicions about KM, questioning her would probably have been futile with nothing other than suspicion to go on.

Yeah, my feeling was that the police were always suspicious about both Karen and Craig but while Shannon was still missing they couldn't go in too hard, panic them and whoever had Shannon and then Shannon really would be in danger. They had to play the waiting game.

And then when Shannon was found they could then start to build the case. They already had the main 'kidnapper' by then. He told his story about Karen's involvement immediately.

Karen Matthews and Mick Donovan were presumably never in phone contact during the time of Shannon's disappearance? Which is probably why it went on for so long. Presumably they forgot to come up with a plan beforehand as to when Shannon should miraculously reappear. By the time Karen reported Shannon as missing, there's no way she could have risked phoning Mick to flesh out the plan. So Mick just kept Shannon, waiting for someone (presumably someone in his family) to contact him about when to release Shannon. And that contact never came.

I know a reporter and he covered the case. He said all the journalists knew something was very off with the situation but obviously did not know what.

One thing I don't understand is why Julie seems to imply that Karen leaving Craig for the uncle is a better motive than plotting to share the money (i.e. she was trying to leave Craig and is a vulnerable/taken advantage of person for whom we should feel a tiny bit sorry). She wasn't moving them for a better life, to get them away from a paedophile, she was moving them towards another abusive random 'dad' who'd had his own children taken away from them for sexual abuse/poor boundaries, and thought it was ok to restrain a 9 year old with a piece of elastic for weeks on end. In other words, she was leaving one abusive man for another one, probably for her own sexual reasons.

I thought the Julie character came over better than everyone thought on here, and in some ways, she was relatively successful in keeping the case in front of the media and had this been a more conventional missing child case, this could have been a good thing.

I finally watched both parts last night, I didn't think SS, the actress was all that bad. I just felt it was poor taste given that the children were affect, it's likely to bring up memories and thoughts, they'd rather not revisit. So hope BBC ensured support for them in some format.

Did anyone watch the recent Channel 5 documentary - Shannon Matthews - Where Are They Now?

It talked to a number of the people who were involved at the time, including Kinchy, the policeman who was assigned to the estate, and to Julie Bushby, and to a cousin of Karen Matthews.

It was very interesting - they did look at the BBC drama, and how it portrayed the life on the estate - but what interested me the most was how self deprecating Julie was - she completely denied that she was the organiser/leader of the search and the efforts on the estate, when she clearly was. She came over very well - loyal to her friend and to where she lived, and very positive about life there, despite the backlash the estate received in the wake of Shannon's disappearance and the court case after she was found.

Many of the people interviewed said that they believed Karen and her uncle were not the only people involved in the plot - especially Karen, who they all said was not intelligent enough to think it up.