Madeleine McCann: Netflix and Maddie Podcast in ratings battle
Netflix and chill to the Maddie McCann documentary soon-to-be streamed to your living rooms. It’ll be a show that tugs hard on the single-thread story: child vanishes. What light it will shed on the vanishing is clear to anyone whose followed the story since May 2007, when the British child disappeared on a family holiday to Portugal. None. This is entertainment. Child vanishes, possibly abducted and, if the media narrative is right, maybe sold into slavery and sexually abused. Netflix and chill.
Madeleine McCann’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have taken no part in the show, say reports. But they’ll know about it, and if the McCanns take out a Netflix subscription they can watch it and thereby find out if Maddie is a hit.
But who needs to wait for Netflix’s hot take when the ‘Our Maddie’ show has barely paused for breath since it first aired on May 3 2007. On today’s 9News (Australia) you can read: “Top Maddie cop: ‘I’ve seen nothing to make me think Gerry and Kate McCann had something to do with daughter’s disappearance’.” Well, d’uh. If you had done, Mr Top Cop, you’d have surely questioned them about it. But the bigger question remains: can you build a media career on knowing nothing?
Before we hear from Jim Gamble, the former head of Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP), know this: “Maddie is currently the number one podcast on Australia’s iTunes chart, reaching that spot inside of 24 hours of launch.” We’re Number 1!
In episode two of Maddie, Nine.com.au’s new podcast investigating Madeleine’s disappearance, Gamble outlined the profilers’ mission, and potential crime scene scenarios his team explored.
“When the case first began to unravel … I began to simply watch the news feed and then get direct feedback from our team on the ground,” Gamble said. “Being a police officer, I am a cynic… I believe that any good investigator clears the ground beneath their feet. So of course the first people you suspect are the parents, because they are there, they are in proximity, it is their child. Did I believe at the beginning that the parents could possibly have done it? Yes. As time went on, did I see evidence that supported that hypothesis? No, I did not.”
Adding apropos of ‘ME!’:
“Now that’s not to say that something couldn’t turn up in the future where I think: ‘Oh flip, you know I was right in the beginning and I’m wrong now’. But I’ve seen nothing, been briefed on nothing and heard nothing that would make me think that Gerry and Kate McCann [had] something to do with their daughter’s disappearance.”
What utter balls. Speculation is not news. But enough of that old copper because here comes another one. The Mail hears the plod of shiny boots on media studio carpet: “Friend of Kate McCann slams retired police chief who said their claims Maddie was abducted through their apartment window raised a ‘red flag’.”
A family friend to Kate McCann has slammed claims made by a top superintendent that the story around her disappearance raises ‘red flags’.
In a podcast by 9 News, retired superintendent Peter MacLeod cast doubt on the logistics of an abductor theory and said it would have been ‘difficult’ for a kidnapper to have entered the Praia da Luz apartment as three-year-old Madeleine slept. However a friend of the family refuted the ‘spurious allegations’ and the suggestion that Madeleine’s parents, from Rothley, Leicestershire, had anything to do with her kidnapping.
The family “friend” remains nameless, as ever it was. The Mail quotes McLeod:
During the podcast, titled Maddie, the retired police chief said: ‘The window is only an absolutely maximum 50cm wide, in reality 46 wide, and it’s already a metre off the ground. I had a look at that and my shoulders are wider than that little window. So although you could climb in sideways you certainly can’t jump in if you are a normal sized person.’
[Size of his shoulders unstated but available on request.]
‘I frankly do not think it’s possible. It would be difficult enough to get yourself in. You’d have to grab hold of windows, grab hold of things. Then you’ve got to pick up a child without waking it up without waking the other two children. I do not think it can be done, or let me put it another way, I do not see how anyone could do it.’
Insight be damned!
A “friend to the McCann family” tells the Sun: “Spurious allegations discussing what might have and might not have happened that night have been made umpteen times. Anybody can do a podcast, it doesn’t mean it’s right, and one spouting off about what they did and subsequently said is something quite frankly they will ignore. What would he know?”
Well ignored. And now for the main event… which will be right after over a decade of prequels…
Posted: 6th, March 2019 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
