By Christopher Stevens Published: 18:57 EDT, 3 October 2024 | Updated: 21:26 EDT, 3 October 2024

The Search For Nicola Bulley (BBC1)Rating:The police ignore so much. Call them to report a burglary, and they’ll just give you a crime number for your insurers. Tell them about boys on scooters selling drugs in the park, and they’ll simply shrug.So why are they so obsessed with whatever drivel people spout on social media? Some garbled, semi-coherent diatribe on TikTok or Instagram will provoke the kind of response that used to be reserved for bank robberies. Fire up the Quattro!Those three weeks in 2023 following the disappearance of a Lancashire mortgage adviser and mother, documented in The Search For Nicola Bulley, were dominated by police panic over online comments. Senior investigating officer Becky Smith and her team were as hypersensitive and overdramatic as a bunch of teenage girls sharing gossip about a break-up. Nicola Bulley disappeared on January 27 2023 while walking her dog in St Michael’s on Wyre Nicola Bulley’s parents Dorothy Bulley and Ernest Bulley talking on the Search for Nicola Bulley documentary So why are the police so obsessed with whatever drivel people spout on social media?, writes Christopher Stevens (pictured: Paul Ansell)Their inability to ignore the internet’s nonsense culminated in a shocking press statement, intended to deflect online criticism, that besmirched Nicola’s memory for ever. Rather than get their heads down and do their jobs, they painted her as an alcoholic with suicidal tendencies — a gross misrepresentation of a much-loved wife and mum.The ultimate indignity was that the police failed to locate her body first. Instead, the breakthrough was made by spiritualist medium Jason Rothwell, who claimed that Nicola spoke to him from the beyond: ‘Find me where you find your dog,’ she said. Rather than get their heads down and do their jobs, the police painted her as an alcoholic with suicidal tendencies, writes Christopher Stevens (pictured: Dorothy Bulley and Ernest Bulley)Incredibly, Jason’s dog, which had died weeks earlier, was called Hudson . . . and on the River Wyre was a site called Hudsons Fishery. In reeds on the bank there, he spotted her corpse.As divers recovered the body, Det Supt Smith ordered a cordon to be put up, to keep conspiracy theorists and ghouls away. ‘We put up a tent,’ she said, choking back a sob, ‘and I sat with Nikki in that tent for quite a long time.’No doubt her emotion will play well on social media. That’s a win for Lancashire Police.What defies understanding is why the force cares what these people think. Director James Rogan’s thorough, methodical and evenly paced documentary introduced us to several of the podcasters and tweeters — every one of them the sort of needy attention-seekers you’d cross the road to avoid.One was a Swiss-based South African called Gisela K who cultivates a sort of Gothic secretarial look, like Bela Lugosi’s diary manager. She runs a YouTube channel with 360,000 followers called Grizzly True Crime, which she describes as, ‘a one-woman brand — that would be me and this community called the Grizzlies.’ Most of her viewers, Gisela claimed, ‘were more into the abduction theory than anything else’. She didn’t clarify whether she meant alien abduction.At least she stayed in Switzerland. Far more obnoxious were the self-appointed investigators who broke on to private land, accusing innocent locals of hiding evidence about Nicola’s disappearance.During all this, her husband, Paul, and their family had to hold on to their sanity. They remained dignified. No one else did.

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The Search For Nicola Bulley review: How the police’s panic over online drivel failed tragic Nicola’s family, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS