# Dear Child (2023)

> A woman's escape from long captivity pushes investigators to reopen a disappearance from thirteen years earlier.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/147307

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 6
- Episode runtime: 48 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: crime, drama, mystery
- Created by: Isabel Kleefeld, Julian Pörksen
- Network: Netflix
- Cast: Kim Riedle, Naila Schuberth, Sammy Schrein, Hans Löw, Haley Louise Jones, Justus von Dohnányi, Julika Jenkins, Nagmeh Alaei
- TMDB rating: 7.3/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20863760/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: tense, bleak, unsettling, melancholic

## What critics say

Audiences rate this German miniseries positively, praising its gripping mystery and emotionally charged story of a captive woman's escape and the long-buried disappearance it exposes.

## Synopsis

Dear Child (2023) is a German national-television crime miniseries created by Isabel Kleefeld and Julian Pörksen for Netflix. It runs six episodes of roughly forty-eight minutes each and tells one continuous story. A mysterious woman escapes a harrowing captivity and her testimony sends investigators back to an unsolved disappearance from thirteen years earlier. Kim Riedle plays Jasmin Grass, whose presence pulls the old case into the present, while Naila Schuberth plays Hannah and Justus von Dohnányi plays Matthias Beck, two figures whose lives are tangled in the long-buried facts. Each episode peels back another layer of the past through flashbacks and shifting suspicions, with investigators interviewing families and neighbors and testing each new lead against what they already believe. The mood is tense, bleak and quietly unsettling, built on dread and family secrets rather than spectacle. Fans of Dark, The Killing and Mare of Easttown will find resonance in its patient reveals, its emotionally wounded characters and its focus on how a community lives with an unanswered loss. The series is a compact, serious piece of European crime storytelling that rewards full attention.

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