The Missing: Eerie details of Alice's suffering during 11-year disappearance emerges

Wednesday night's pick this autumn is undoubtedly the BBC1 thriller series, The Missing. The unsettled drama has made a welcome return after a two-year hiatus and its new second series is more unsettling than ever.

Last week viewers were introduced to Alice Webster – a young girl who casually saunters back into her hometown in Germany after disappearing 11 years ago.

Her return sent shockwaves throughout the community and moves her family to the point of despair. Her now-divorced parents – played by Keeley Hawes and David Morrissey – struggle to come to terms with what their quiet and impaired daughter has suffered as she comes back to them in a weary state with bulging, zombie-like red eyes.

When a doctor revealed, in the first episode, that Alice possessed the physical signs of childbirth – they fell to pieces in their own ways through violence and unspoken pain.

Tonight's second episode will see the emotional story unravel as viewers witness the aftershock of the missing child's return and how the world has evolved and changed since she left. For over a decade, her stricken parents have wanted their little girl back. Now that she is finally home, they find their lives far from healed.

Gemma's suspicions about what her daughter has been through begins to grow. In the meantime, the Royal Military Police agree to share jurisdiction with German detectives and launch a manhunt for the second missing girl named Sophie Giroux. Alice revealed that she was well acquainted with the missing woman – whose case was initially investigated in 2003 by the French detective Julien Baptise.

We'll see war journalist Stefan Andersson help Julien make his way to Azwya to go looking for answers which he believes are there – but the reasoning behind the French investigator's presence in Iraq is still a mystery.

The Missing airs tonight at 9pm on BBC1.