Someone Knows Something
, or SKS, is a CBC radio production. Seasons 1-4 follow documentary filmmaker David Ridgen as he investigates missing persons cold cases. Ridgen interviews witnesses and family members, and employs experts to cast new light on old cases.
Season 1 (11 episodes) is about the disappearance of five-year-old Adrien McNaughton in 1972. Ridgen was raised in Ottawa Valley town where the McNaughtons lived, and was only a year younger than Adrien.
Season 2 (12 episodes) examines the disappearance of Sheryl Sheppard mere days after her televised engagement in January of 1998.
Season 3 (7 episodes) dramatically changes both the topic and location, studying a racially motivated American murder case for which no one was prosecuted. Ridgen is joined by Thomas Moore, the brother of one of the two victims.
Someone Knows Something provides examples of:
- All First-Person Narrators Write Like Novelists: Ridgen, while speaking in the first person, has clearly scripted narration which concisely but eloquently describes his subjects. This contrasts with the actual conversations and interviews also included in the show.
- Alliterative Name: Sheryl Sheppard
- Clip Show: Terminus, the finale of Season 1, uses pieces of old interviews to summarize the season.
- Driving Question:
- Season 1: What happened to Adrien McNaughton and where is he now?
- Season 2: What happened to Sheryl Sheppard, and was Michael Lavoie responsible?
- Fire of Comfort: In season 1, episode 10, the search party prepares and tends a bonfire on a cold morning. There are crackling sounds in the background, and the family members tend it while the divers search for remains.
- From Beyond the Fourth Wall: In Season 1, the age-up portraits of Adrien were posted on the website and on social media in hopes that someone might recognize and help find him.
- Interrupted Suicide: In season 2, Michael Lavoie nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a believed suicide attempt several days after Sheryl’s disappearance.
- Narrator: David Ridgen narrates his investigation, describing the people he meets, things he sees, and his own thoughts about what may have happened and the deeper meaning of it all.
- Not Proven:
- Opening Narration:Season 1: In 1972, five year old Adrien McNaughton vanished while on a fishing trip in Eastern Ontario. Documentarian David Ridgen goes back to the small town he grew up in, searching for answers.Season 2: On December 31, 1997, at a New Years’ Eve Party, Sheryl Sheppard was proposed to on live TV. Two days later, she disappeared. Documentarian David Ridgen joins Sheryl’s mother Odette on her search for answers.
- Revisiting the Cold Case: The point of the podcast
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: In the first season, most of the family hoped for or believed that Adrien might still be alive, and one of the most consistently brought up theories was that he might have been abducted and raised by a loving family. In Season 2, Sheryl’s mother immediately says that she doesn’t believe that Sheryl is alive. (This can be justified by the age difference between the missing).
- That One Case: Sheppard’s disappearance may be this for Korol.Warren Korol: I had a pretty good career as a detective, and a good success rate of solving these things, but this is outstanding. There isn’t a day that goes by, you know, like if I ever hear of any found remains and in my head, [snaps fingers] automatically I think of Sheryl
- This Is Reality: Ridgen discusses this when he occasionally compares his investigation to a movie, catching himself when he starts making Wrong Genre Savvy assumptions
- Title Drop: In the page quote.
- The Unsolved Mystery: The premise of the series
