TV Scope

Our Daughter Holly: A Tonight Special ITV, Thursday, March 11th, 9 p.m.

It happens to most families with young children at some stage - a child goes missing out of the blue. Gut-wrenching terror takes root. Seconds appear like interminably long minutes as desperate efforts are made to find a loved one. The younger they are, the more the fear is multiplied.

Thankfully, it usually ends with a joyful reunion; the trigger having been a misunderstanding, a silly row or the lure of adventure.

In the case of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, minutes turned into 14 horrendous days until the badly decomposed bodies of the two friends were discovered. Their beautifully ordinary lives in Soham suddenly fronted every news bulletin, their photograph in Manchester United garb taken hours before their disappearance shone into every home.

How does a family deal with such sorrow, great trauma and unrelenting media exposure? In the case of the Chapmans, it appears, their way to some peace is private grief, inward solidarity and a quieter presence in their community - manifesting in no media interviews. The approach is a great contrast to that of Kevin and Nicola Wells, reflected in a one-and-a-half hour documentary where they talked with family members and friends of every aspect of the death of 10-year-old Holly at the hands of "sexual predator" Ian Huntley.

For the Wells and Chapman families, the "missing" scenario was after a Sunday afternoon barbecue when the girls disappeared into the nearby "safe cul de sac environment". What followed was played out with excruciating agony on television screens the world over. It was no less painful last week than when it occurred in 2002 or when the trial was taking place. And yet Holly's parents chose to revisit it through a documentary with the gruesome detail and jagged emotions of that time still raw.

There was the silence when her relatives shouted up the stairs to say goodbye; the searching all night; the calling out of their names; feeling physically sick as the police searched their house; facing the cameras yet again; and the debate about whether to put Holly's toy dog Snoozums into her coffin because, as Kevin noted, "you could smell Holly off it". Perhaps most painful was the letter they put into the coffin, so sorrowful and tinged with guilt.

As he recalled, "What could we have done that would have made a difference; something they should have said to make her more aware?"

From the perspective of a person addressing great tragedy in their lives, the documentary was compelling. He was no ordinary father, rather a formidable presence who wrote a chilling diary of those times on his home computer and even filmed himself recording every detail. It was a lesson in plain speaking; at the same time he was arrestingly articulate. How did they die, in what order, was it a terrible sexual ordeal, did they see each other die?

Kevin Wells described his diary as facing his worst fears through his writing. There is everything to suggest it was a cathartic exercise for him, if not his family.

Resolution, however, does not mean elimination of grief or filling in the emptiness. But it was a way of moving on, of putting in context - but not necessarily expunging deeply felt anger. He told us uneasy viewers: "and it never ends really". And there will always be unfinished business. Kevin Wells intends to meet Ian Huntley when he gets out of jail, even if he is 90 years of age. No, he doesn't know what he will say to him.