The producers of the hit drama The Missing have promised viewers that the season finale will not disappoint.

The show’s writers, brothers Harry and Jack Williams, were joined by one of the main stars Tcheky Karyo and the show’s executive producer Willow Grylls, at a screening of the fifth episode ahead of it airing on BBC One on Wednesday night.

Willow said: “Endings always divide people, but will the ending answer all the questions people have? Yes, I think it will.”

The 2014 series starred James Nesbitt and Frances O’Connor as distraught parents Tony and Emily, whose five-year-old son Olly goes missing while holiday in France.

James and Frances have not returned for the second series and instead the drama is focused around Keeley Hawes and David Morrissey, who play Gemma and Sam Webster, the parents of a missing girl, Alice.

Tcheky returns in his role as French detective Julien Baptiste, who comes out of retirement when Alice turns up in Eckhausen, the small German town she was abducted from 11 years previously.

Baptiste, who is battling a brain tumour, is adamant the return of Alice is linked to a case he worked on in 2003, that of the disappearance of a French girl named Sophie Giroux.

The drama plays out over two time-scales, with flashbacks to 2014 and other events unfolding in the present.

Tcheky admitted the dark storylines do sometimes “go home with him”.

He said: “I feel like I’m 30 but I’m 63, I look behind and I see this road and I’m thinking what is left, anybody can die one day after the other.

“To go through this kind of emotion and what he’s going through with this disease (the brain tumour), I go back and I have to sleep… and eat well and do push ups.

“Because it stays with me, and it’s questioning me also because I have children, I have a four-year-old daughter and a little baby of seven months, so I’m a young father,” he added jokingly.

The Missing airs on BBC One on Wednesday at 9pm.