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On the morning of 27 January 2023, Nicola Bulley is walking her dog along the River Wyre in the quiet Lancashire village of St Michael’s on Wyre, when she disappears without a trace.

The question of what has happened to her transfixes the nation. The 45-year-old mortgage adviser and mum of two seemed to have no reason to disappear, so where has she gone? To add to the mystery, her dog is running loose, and her phone is still on a Teams call.

The police suspect she has fallen in the river. But many fear she has been abducted. Over the next three weeks, the search for Nicola snowballs into an unprecedented global news and social media storm. Her disappearance leads to sensational headlines, conspiracies swirling online, the police revealing Nicola’s intimate personal information, and TikTok sleuths descending on the village to carry out their own amateur ‘investigations’.

Nicola’s family are swept up in an unprecedented level of scrutiny while going through the most traumatic time of their lives. The frenzy of online speculation and media attention continues to escalate, even after Nicola’s body is tragically found in the river about a mile from where she disappeared.

With exclusive access to Nicola’s family and those at the heart of the case, including Lancashire Police, journalists, the person who found her and social media creators, this documentary charts how it all unfolded, examining the impact the events have had on Nicola’s family and raising questions about how the case was handled by the police, media and social media.