Last updated 09:13, Saturday, 03 May 2008

One of the most troubling aspects of the year long Madeleine McCann mystery has been the claiming as right by all and sundry of an opinion on the family... and most particularly on Kate McCann.

From utterly ludicrous media claims – that she’s too fashionably thin, too attractive and too middle class to be anything other than blameless – to nauseating fictional assumptions of deep, impossible knowledge of her torment, the majority have tended to make meaningless headlines and plump out TV current affairs schedules with the soft focus of amateur psychology.

On today’s anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, heightened scrutiny of her parents’ activities in Portugal, imagined or otherwise, was always inevitable. And it’s running true to predictable form. But the honest truth is nobody knows anything worthwhile as to the whereabouts of the little girl nor what happened to her on May 3, 2007 – a point Kate and Gerry McCann make forcefully. Their claims of inept police investigations into cruel abduction, missed leads, trails gone cold, withheld information and character assassination have yet to be tested, never mind proved true. And all that made their insistences in Madeleine, One Year On – Campaign for Change (ITV1) more than simply curious.

The couple has learned quickly and extremely well how to make best use of media hunger for human stories. They have had to do; such is the way of a world in demand of information overload.

But for formal suspects in an alleged serious crime against a child to be offered a two-hour case for the defence, presented to millions of self-appointed judges and jurors, with no balancing testimony from their accusers, is a shift in the way of the world that is distinctly dubious.

Superficially, this documentary followed the McCanns’ crusade for a European missing child alert system. In reality it delved in deep detail into the couple’s claims of persecution, victimisation, mistreatment by a foreign police force with its own agenda of convenience and malicious smearing – the proper place for which was in a court of law, where it could be challenged.

Kate McCann’s tearfulness added strength to sense that a stairway to sainthood was under construction, while the subject of dining out and leaving children alone in bed was sidestepped as not at all helpful in the business of bringing Madeleine back home.

The overall tone of this long piece was one of PR. Its accompanying piano mood-music invited a voyeurism of the kind that appeals to lovers of weepie movies. In the feature-length film we were invited to look in on the pain of real parents under suspicion in grief and loss, pleading for sympathy.

This pitch was blatantly for fiercely favourable public opinion to fall on the side of official suspects. The McCanns were making their unequivocal case for miscarriage of justice, even before Lady Justice had been allowed to lift her little finger. And that was more than simply curious.