# Playing Gracie Darling (2025)

> A child psychologist returns to her hometown when a childhood game turns sinister after a second girl vanishes.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/178855

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 6
- Episode runtime: 45 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: mystery, thriller
- Created by: Miranda Nation
- Network: Paramount+
- Cast: Kristina Bogic, Morgana O'Reilly, Rudi Dharmalingam, Chloe Brink, Saiesha Sundaralingam, Ariel Donoghue, Celia Pacquola, Annie Maynard
- TMDB rating: 6.2/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33384059/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: eerie, melancholic, tense, foreboding

## What critics say

Audience reception is negative, with viewers rating the miniseries low despite its eerie premise.

## Synopsis

Playing Gracie Darling (2025) is an Australian supernatural mystery miniseries created by Miranda Nation for Paramount+. Morgana O'Reilly plays Joni Grey, a child psychologist who returns to the small town where her best friend Gracie Darling (Kristina Bogic) vanished during a séance twenty-seven years earlier. Her search runs alongside police sergeant Jay Rajeswaran (Rudi Dharmalingam), an uneasy partner whose investigation keeps colliding with local grief and old silences. The engine of the story is a children's game, Playing Gracie Darling, that the local kids treat as a dare and that turns sinister when another girl disappears. Celia Pacquola plays Ruth Darling, Gracie's sister, whose own daughter vanishes under hauntingly similar circumstances, giving the mystery an intensely personal edge. Across six episodes of roughly forty-five minutes each, the story moves between past and present, building a single continuing puzzle rather than a case of the week. The tone is eerie and melancholic, with a creeping sense of dread and grief that settles over the town. Fans of Top of the Lake, Wind River and The Haunting of Hill House will find resonance in its atmospheric small town menace and its focus on trauma that refuses to stay buried.

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