Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Relentless’ On Discovery+, A Docuseries On A Filmmaker Uncovering Secrets As She Investigates The Case Of A Missing Woman

Relentless is a six-part docuseries about the disappearance of Christina Whittaker in 2009. Filmmaker Christina Fontana met Whittaker’s mother, Cindy Young, in 2010 when she was doing a documentary about the families of people who went missing, and has doggedly pursued the case in the decade since, finding out secrets about the town of Hannibal, Whittaker, and her family in the process. “It’s not just a story about a girl gone missing,” Fontana says, “It’s a story about a town filled with lies and corruption and violence and a decade-long obsession to find the truth.”

RELENTLESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A rainy day on the Mississippi River, in Hannibal, Missouri. We hear a phone ringing. The outgoing message specifically tells a woman named Christina to let her know she’s still alive.

The Gist: We start about a year after Whittaker’s disappearance, with Cindy Young, Whittaker’s stepfather Alex Young, and Whittaker’s 18-month-old daughter Alexandria. Fontana is in an old RV trailer with them; the couple has had to downsize because they need the money to keep the investigation going. At this point, Fontana is all in with the Youngs, following them around as they pursue every lead.

The night Christina Whitaker disappeared, there are eyewitness accounts of the 21-year-old being intoxicated and getting into altercations, then grabbed by a Black male and led out of one of the three bars she was in that night. There is a thought that Darcy “Bookie” Morris, whom Whittaker knows, took her to Peoria, Ill, and got her involved in sex trafficking in order to pay off a drug debt. Cindy finds that hard to believe, because, according to her, Whittaker never took drugs. The Hannibal police insist there was no foul play, but the Youngs are insistent that there was.

As Fontana gets deeper into their case, she follows them around as they chase lead after lead; every time someone says they thought they saw Whittaker, the Youngs go off and follow up, always reaching a dead end. Then, in 2012, one of their cousins comes into a possession of a phone that has a text that talks about removing Christina’s body. The circumstances of that text are highly suspicious, so when she presents it to the investigator the Young’s hired, he tells Fontana that the message may have been faked in order to throw her off the trail, lest she reveal something the Youngs don’t want revealed.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Relentless not only focuses on the case it documents, but on how the filmmaker documenting it got so embroiled in the investigation. In that regard, it reminds us of I’ll Be Gone In The Dark or Confronting A Serial Killer, where the filmmaker or writer is as much or more the focus of the series than the cases themselves.

Our Take: What Fontana is trying to do in the first episode of Relentless is set up the cast of characters and document how and why she started getting involved in Whittaker’s case. At first, the episode starts to play out as a typical true crime cable documentary, full of ominous music, quick cuts, flashy graphics and lurid voice overs. There are times when Fontana is talking directly to the camera on her iPhone.

But as Fontana realizes that nothing about Whittaker or her family is as it seems, the episode gets more interesting. Yes, Cindy and Alan Young are desperate to find their daughter, and desperate to keep custody of Alexandria in case her father comes back in the picture. But when we start seeing the Youngs ping Fontana with every possible lead, no matter how tenuous, and see them drive through Peoria looking for their daughter, the show starts to get interesting.

At the end of the episode, Fontana and the Youngs’ investigator talk about that text message that seemed to come to the Youngs through a series of impossible coincidences. The investigator tells Fontana that Whittaker had a drug problem, despite everything the Youngs told her, and that they knew her disappearance had something to do with a drug debt. “This family had serious problems,” he tells Fontana.

It’s certainly an intriguing entry into how Fontana gets embroiled into this investigation, and it’ll be fascinating to watch her get deeper into Whittaker’s family history and the hows and whys of the lack of participation by both the police departments in Hannibal and Peoria. It is what’s going to separate Relentless from the run-of-the-mill true crime docuseries.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Fontana, shaken by the news that the Youngs might be playing her, hears from the investigator, “I turned your world upside down; I’m sorry,” said in a tone that conveys that he did it because he thought she had a right to know the truth.

Sleeper Star: Cindy Young is very believable when she says things like her daughter never took drugs or wasn’t a heavy drinker. It makes the revelation that she’s hiding something all the more shocking.

Most Pilot-y Line: Some of the scenes where Fontana is talking directly into the camera from some hotel room feel like they’re gilding the lily. We know she’s in the middle of this, so the fourth-wall stuff feels unnecessary.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Even though Relentless is a bit lacking in style, the twists and turns the story takes more than make up for it. Christina Fontana’s pursuit of the Christina Whittaker case looks like it’ll go down a lot of interesting paths before the six episodes are over.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Relentless On Discovery+