'The Stolen Girl' Trailer Hinges on Every Parent's Nightmare

Until the advent of streaming, the only major network that consistently brought over British programming for American audiences was PBS. Sure, Bravo and A&E took turns trying to be the "cable version of public broadcasting" when they launched; both were short-lived. Meanwhile, BBC America was always relegated to the uppermost tiers of the cable landscape. However, PBS (and Masterpiece especially) gave Americans the wrong idea of what plays on British networks, showing only the creme de la creme of programs and conveniently ignoring the more mainstream stuff meant for a broader audience that's much more typical of what's found on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, like the child kidnapping thriller The Stolen Girl.

This false impression is only just starting to lift a decade into British fare coming over on multiple platforms, but even so, there's a tendency by the studios distributing series that British fare is somehow "better" and deserves to be on a more elite platform. This is why Disney+ tends to put it all on Hulu or FX (which then streams on Hulu), as both are seen as networks that broadcast Emmy-worthy fare. But someone wised up regarding The Stolen Girl, a series that fits in with much more female-coded, family-centric channels like Disney+'s Freeform.

Freeform, like many cable networks, had been all but abandoned in the last few years. Like many of the channels within its tier, it's become what's known as a "zombie channel," rerunning shows and movies 24-7-365 that no one watches, with little to no original programming for marketing to use to promote them. That's why it's a good sign that Disney is putting The Stolen Girl on Freeform to reach the proper audience for the series and help boost the flagging network.