On Demand Weekly

Media savant T Tara Turk goes deep inside cable TV to reveal Video On Demand's Hidden Gems so even the busiest of our readers can get the most out of On Demand TV. Tell Tara what VOD shows you think deserves her attention.

FIND OUR MISSING

By T. Tara Turk

My first memory of realizing that black people could go missing like everyone else was when I was really small and watching the news about the Atlanta Child Murders. Having been raised on television, my mother was mostly conscious of what I was watching but who knew that the news could send a kid terrified of going to bed, of how dark our backyard that led to an abandoned hospital could be, of the fact that somebody who looked like me had a shot of getting snatched into thin air. Soon after that, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was revleaed to mostly only look for young black males to...well, ingest. But both instances were of a serial nature. Not singular ones.

You see normally, and even now, most of the news about missing people is of people who don’t look very much like me at all when it comes to single disappearances. For instance nobody really paid attention to the black prostitutes being murdered in Cleveland until the number of victims went over a few. If you’re old enough to remember the milk cartons, well, some of those missing kids blended in right into the box in the early years. The only thing this managed to do was spread some false idea that people of color don’t disappear. And that is so far from the truth.

TV One On Demand is showcasing a much needed show called Find Our Missing, hosted by everyone’s favorite Law & Order matriarch S. Eptaha Merkerson. The show is very much similar in structure as the old favorite America’s Most Wanted, yet this is entirely a different kind of wanted - these are people who’s families are desperate to find out what happened to their loved ones.Merkerson gives brief intros to the stories and then, through reenactments and interviews with key people from the investigations, we are given a little background on the subjects disappearance.

I’ll be watching this show regularly, just as I do most true crime shows. This one will have a bit more of an importance for me as it’ll help me be on the look just that much more so that I can help and be more alert instead of be more terrified.

- T. Tara Turk


T. Tara Turk is a novelist/playwright/screenwriter, living in LA with her boyfriend and dog - all three successful TV addicts. You can find her at www.ttaraturk.com or follow her on Twitter @ttaraturk.