Emmerdale star talks taking on a father's agony in missing person story: 'I hope it makes people think'

Every year 170,000 people go missing in the UK. It is an enormous number and, while some of their names make headlines, most cause quiet anguish behind closed doors for the people closest to them. There is desperation in the unknown as the world loses interest, not out of malice, but because people have their own troubles to face.

Missing people is a topic of, often morbid, fascination in popular culture – but it is challenging to represent on screen. There’s rarely a tidy resolution, and often the focus will be on the most sensationalist plot points. But Emmerdale is taking a punt as teenager April Windsor vanished on Christmas Day.

As one of the nation’s favourite soaps, it has an opportunity to portray the real anguish of a loved one going missing to its millions of viewers. Unlike a 90-minute film or a two-part drama, it has the space to explore the mundane moments.

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For Mark Charnock, who plays April’s father Marlon Dingle, the real grief lies there. “It’s those moments of ordinariness that I think are the worst. There’s no noise. There’s no teenage music coming from the bedroom. No school runs. Every single millisecond of every day is filled with absence,” he says.

Emmerdale’s creators and cast worked with charity Missing People, and Charnock says he felt a responsibility to represent people’s experiences as authentically as possible.

“Anything less than that is an insult. I don’t think it can ever be properly understood unless you’ve been through it yourself. I would never pretend to understand it. But if we can stretch the empathy as far as we can go, then we’ve done our job.”

It starts with conflict between April and Marlon. She has been acting up and there are arguments. So when April goes missing, Marlon is wracked with guilt. 

He realises he has become caught up in the rigamarole of working life, his relationship, the other kids and his own health after a stroke two years ago, and he has neglected to notice everything happening in April’s life. “I think that chews him up at night,” Charnock adds.

Emmerdale is, of course, set in a fictional village in the Yorkshire dales. As with most British soaps, there’s a strong sense of community, including when April is missing.

“Everybody knows each other. Everybody lives in each other’s pockets. Everybody’s a neighbour,” Charnock says. “And everybody’s up for going on a search. People start looking immediately. It shows people at their best, in the cynical world that we live in. 

“But then, as the days and weeks go by, not because of any malice or indifference, people start getting back to their own lives, and the numbers reduce down to this kernel of the few people it directly affects. The real heartbreak of it is that people are like: ‘We’re so sorry you’re going through it, but ultimately it’s not our problem.’”

In desperation, Marlon turns to the press and social media, bringing the world beyond the Dales into their personal life. They put a video out and it goes viral, which they think will help find April – but instead, they discover social media brings out the worst in people.

Charnock has played Marlon since 1996, before social media existed, and has witnessed his character change enormously. Sixteen-year-old Amelia Flanagan, who plays April, joined the cast a decade ago, and Charnock speaks with pride as he says she has grown into a “superb teenage actress”.

Marlon and April’s relationship has changed too – through all the twists of Emmerdale – and this experience will impact the family deeply. It is unknown whether April will be found and, meanwhile, Marlon is in torturous limbo.

“He can’t he can’t be a dad to the other kids. He can’t be a husband to his wife. He can’t be a friend to his friends. He becomes utterly fixated. The only thing he does is go out looking. That’s the thing that so upset me. You become helpless and hopeless. You’re literally in the streets looking for something that you know you’ll probably never see,” Charnock says.

Most people are found within the first two days of going missing – but there are more than 5,000 people in the UK who are known to have been missing for more than a year. For loved ones left behind, it can feel as though the world stops caring. Charnock hopes this storyline in Emmerdale will encourage empathy.

“I hope it means that if people see a missing poster or an appeal, they’ll either help or it’ll make them take a second look,” Charnock says. “We’re all guilty of not taking a second look, because it’s so common. I hope it can make people think about the individual situation, because these are human beings who are lost.”

Find out how to support – or get help from – Missing People here. Emmerdale airs on ITV1 at 7.30pm Monday to Friday. You can catch up on ITVX.

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