Real-life dramas of recognition, reunion

Press, 13 April 1989, Page 11

Real-life dramas of recognition, reunion

The television promotion asked, “Is there someone missing in your life?” and the replies came in by Fast Post. “People who have been desperately trying to find a child for the past 30 or 40 years sent their letters Fast Post, as though one day could make all the difference,” says the veteran broadcaster Brian Edwards.

The response ... “an initial 40 to 50 replies a day; we ended up with in excess of 500 — everyone seems to be missing” ... provides the raw material for Edwards’ new show; “Missing,” which begins an eight-week season tonight at 7, live from Avalon.

“The biggest number of cases we are dealing with are of children trying to find their fathers. Pregnancies 30, 40 and 50 years ago when a mother didn’t keep a child meant fathers shot through. “The next biggest group is children trying to find their mothers, and these are mainly adoption cases. The fascinating thing about these cases is people’s desperate need to know who they are, where they come from, their need to try and make

sense of their own personalities.

“The children may be so different in personality from one parent they are living with or their adopted family that they need a sense of their roots to explain why they are the person they are.

“We have one case where a 73-year-old adopted woman is trying to find her 93-year-old mother.” Edwards says the next category is relatives in general — brothers and sisters, half brothers and half sisters. “After that we have the lighter stories, people trying to find old school friends, a lot of Armed Forces service-type stories — a WAC trying to find an Air Force officer she knew in such and such a camp, someone else trying to find a chap they knew in the war — people trying to find their bridesmaids, and, of course, old flames. “There are a surprising number of requests from elderly people who have been married and are now divorced, or widowed looking for the special friend from their youth.” Edwards says “Missing” really has only one criterion: that one person

should wish to find another; the sole proviso being that this wish should be genuine, and that no harm or distress is intended to the person sought. "People must want to meet another for positive, warm reasons. We’ve already had a couple of people trying to collect debts, and a parent asking after a son, saying ‘Wait till I get my hands on him’.”

In the adoption area “Missing” will follow guidelines: it will not deal with any case where a person is under the age of 20, and every person has an absolute right to refuse contact with another, if they wish. The “Missing” researchers are being assisted in their work by a number of agencies, including the Salvation Army and the Red Cross. “Missing” will be presented each week by Edwards along with Kerre Woodham (formerly of “Fair Go”), and TV newcomers Susan Lei’ataua and Rangimoana Taylor. Each half-hour programme will be divided into three segments: two or three searchers will come on to tell the story of how they became

separated from the person they seek; there is a “search file,” and two reunitings.

“One of these reunions will be fairly light, the other more pathos-laden,” says Edwards. The drama of recognition and reunion will be played out to the full. The “found” person will sometimes be disguised in the audience, sometimes brought with fanfare into the studio, sometimes heard before seen, as in "This Is Your Life.”

As with "Crimewatch,” viewers will become participants in the programme. They will be the unpaid detectives, constantly on the lookout, encouraged to provide information or clues which might result in the finding of a missing person. This information and these clues will form part of the programme material. “Missing” will have as much visual support as possible — old letters, photographs, mementoes, the use of a split screen to compare people as they were with photographs of them as they are today.

Edwards is cautious about adoption reunions, and these will be filmed in advance, rather than played out live on air.