Media Language
The Missing is a complex mainstream television product in which the codes and conventions of
the crime drama are recognisable but they are also challenged and sometimes subverted.
Detailed analysis of this media form including the process through which media language
develops as genre will provide students with an opportunity to understand and reflect on the
dynamic nature of genre.

Analysis should include:
• Mise-en-scene analysis
• Semiotics: how images signify cultural meanings

Narrative
• Which narrative techniques are used to engage the audience in the opening episode of The
Missing?
• How does the use of the narrative conventions of the crime drama – use of enigmas, binary
oppositions, restricted narration etc. – position the audience?
• A narrative approach to crime drama could include analysing the appeals of the structure as
reassuring and predictable – even when dealing with difficult subject matter.
• The ways in which the narrative structure of The Missing offers gratification to the audience.
• Narratology including Todorov