Highlights:
- Maxine Peake stars in Last Seen, Apple TV's new six-episode thriller released today, playing Jenna, the wife of a man living off-grid with a teenage daughter who may not be who she claims to be.
- Reviews have been largely strong, with critics praising the show for prioritising character over cheap twists, in a genre that usually does the opposite.
- Peake's role continues a career-long pattern: two decades after playing Moors murderer Myra Hindley, she's still drawn to complicated, unsettling women living at the edges of ordinary life.
Maxine Peake has spent much of her career being cast as women other actors might shy away from playing. Twenty years ago, it was Myra Hindley. Today, in Apple TV's new thriller Last Seen, it's Jenna, a devoted wife living off the land in rural Australia, married to a man harbouring a secret that could unravel an eleven-year-old missing persons case.
What's the actual story of Last Seen?
Patrick Brammall leads as Ian, a former police detective now working as an emergency call dispatcher, eleven years after his daughter Maggie disappeared. When human remains surface following a storm, and Ian receives a phone call he becomes convinced is from Maggie herself, his careful, sober life starts to unravel. The investigation eventually leads him to Henry Reid, played by Brendan Cowell, and Henry's wife Jenna, played by Peake, a fundamentalist couple living in isolation with a teenage daughter, Sarah, who bears an unsettling resemblance to what Maggie might look like now.
The six-episode series is based on Ryan David Jahn's novel The Dispatcher, and was directed in full by Christian Schwochow, known for his Emmy-nominated work on The Crown.
Who else brings the show to life?
A tight, well-drawn ensemble beyond its two leads. Brendan Cowell plays Henry with what one reviewer called a heavy, guarded stillness, a performance built on restraint rather than obvious menace, and critics have noted the striking physical resemblance between Cowell and Brammall, whether intentional or not. Daniel Henshall plays a character caught between competing loyalties, delivering what reviewers have singled out as one of the show's stronger supporting turns precisely because his allegiances aren't easy to read. Zahra Newman and Jessica Wren round out the cast in key supporting roles, while Tobias Muhafidin completes the ensemble.
The most talked-about newcomer, though, is Chloe Jean Lourdes as Sarah, Henry and Jenna's teenage daughter. It's her screen debut, and critics have been genuinely surprised by how much weight she carries, described by Collider as a striking performance that anchors much of the show's emotional core. For a first screen role, sharing scenes with Peake and Cowell without being overshadowed by either is no small achievement.
How has it actually been reviewed?
Strongly, for the most part, with a few exceptions. RogerEbert.com praised the show for focusing on character over predictable twists, calling it worth a look precisely because it avoids the genre's usual reliance on shock reveals. Collider described it as a thriller uninterested in playing by the genre's usual rules. Not every review was as warm: one syndicated review argued the mystery at its centre "gets lost down under," offering revelations that land as intentionally anticlimactic rather than satisfying. Across the board, though, Peake's performance as Jenna was singled out, described by Collider as a quieter, gentler counterweight to her husband's more headstrong nature.
| Last Seen, at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Platform | Apple TV, released today |
| Episodes | 6 |
| Director | Christian Schwochow (all episodes) |
| Based on | The Dispatcher, by Ryan David Jahn |
| Peake plays | Jenna, wife of Henry Reid |
| Filmed | Victoria, Australia |
Why does Peake keep ending up in roles like this?
It's less a coincidence than a career-long thread. In 2006, Peake played Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders, a role that demanded she inhabit one of the most reviled figures in modern British history with enough nuance to be watchable rather than simply monstrous. She's since built a body of work leaning consistently toward morally complicated, socially marginal women: a working-class comic in Funny Cow, a woman at the centre of the 1819 Peterloo massacre in Mike Leigh's film of the same name, and now Jenna, a woman whose devotion to her husband and daughter sits directly on top of something far darker.
Peake, who trained at RADA after growing up in Bolton, first became widely known as Twinkle in Victoria Wood's Dinnerladies, a role about as far removed in tone from Jenna as it's possible to get. The distance between those two performances says as much about her range as any single role could.
Is this the biggest thing she's done recently?
By profile, arguably yes. Peake has remained a consistently working actor across television, film and stage, including a widely discussed turn as the title role in Hamlet at Manchester's Royal Exchange, but a lead role in a major Apple TV thriller places her in front of a considerably larger global audience than most of her recent British stage and screen work. Whether Last Seen becomes the project she's best remembered for depends on how the rest of its six episodes land. Early reviews suggest her performance, at least, isn't the part anyone's questioning.
