Patrick Brammall’s devastated cop seizes on a glimmer of hope years after his daughter was kidnapped in this new and rather grim-looking Australian crime drama.
How to watch Last Seen in Australia
Last Seen is streaming in Australia exclusively on Apple TV from September 9, 2026.
What is Last Seen about?
Adapted from crime writer Ryan David Jahn’s award-winning 2011 novel The Dispatcher, Last Seen relocates the action to Australia, with Patrick Brammall playing a police officer whose life completely falls apart after his young daughter Maggie vanishes without a trace.
11 years later, he’s manning a desk as an emergency dispatcher when he gets a call from a young woman that he is convinced is the missing Maggie. Galvanised to action, he sets about tracking down the anonymous woman, determined to reunite his shattered family.
Jahn was originally inspired by the all-too-real kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, although Last Seen is a work of fiction. Still, it’s likely to be a pretty grim work of fiction, based on the Wikipedia article. Click that link at your peril.
The cast of Last Seen
Patrick Brammall is Ian Ridley; Maxine Peake is Jenna Reid; Brendan Cowell is Henry Reid; Daniel Henshall is Donald Reid; Zahra Newman is Isabel Pena; and Felix Cameron is Tommy Brenton.
Plus, Bert La Bonté is Bill McCracken; Fletcher Humphrys is Peter Mulligan; Carolyn Bock is Lydia; Taylor Ferguson is Polly Foster; Hasini Walpola is Shyla; James Saunders is Ben Sizemore; Oscar Redding is Jack Brenton; and Emma Choy is Imogen Smith.
Last Seen trailer
Why we’re excited about Last Seen
Australia has a long and storied tradition of unbearably grim crime fiction – we’ve just got a weird knack for it.
For all that Last Seen has its origins in the United States (the novel is set in Texas). It looks like it’s going to sit nicely on the shelf alongside The Boys, Snowtown, and other gritty slices of Antipodean alienation.