A room frozen in time. Pic: BBC/Todd Anthony

Their stories, and those of other unfortunate souls, have also inspired fictional stories by an industry obsessed with tales of grit and perseverance.

Room, the feature film which earnt Brie Larson an Oscar earlier this year, was an endearing and hopeful approach to a grim and dark subject matter. Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt undercut the tragedy with comedy and light, while American series The Family was less successful in piecing together something that was doomed for cancellation.

Add to those three recent projects the new BBC series Thirteen, set to debut on Australian screens this Sunday night.

In Thirteen, 26-year-old Ivy Moxam escapes from the house that held her prisoner, dazed and confused as she stumbles into the muted British sun. She was abducted when she was 13 years old and has been a prisoner for just as long.

In the time she’s been gone, her parents have split up, her younger sister is engaged and her old high school sweetheart is married. Everyone has moved on.

When she re-enters everyone’s lives, it’s a tinderbox affair as her family, old friends and the investigating cops tiptoe around and mollycoddle her, trying to understand what having Ivy back means for them.

Ivy herself is a tangled ball of arrested development, fragile victim, defiant survivor and a mystery to be unravelled.

What’s Ivy hiding?Source:Supplied

Taking on such a complex character is a big job for any actor, let alone a young one. Jodie Comer, best known to British audiences for her role as a young seductress in Doctor Foster, told news.com.au the role of Ivy came along at a time in her career when she was looking for a challenge.

“I watched a program a couple of years ago called The Missing and it was about a young boy who had been kidnapped,” she said. “At the end they showed this clip about how he was later found. At the time, I thought about how it would be very intense but rewarding to do as an actor. I forgot about it for a bit, but then the audition for Thirteen came up about a year later.”

For Comer, she said stories like Ivy’s fascinate audiences because the real-life counterparts are always in the news, but the survivors just become names, you don’t get all the sides to the story.

“This is someone’s life and to be able to explore that and the repercussions on her family and friend, it’s interesting to see that side of it.

“Vanessa Caswill, the first director, did a lot of work with me one-on-one, going through Ivy’s backstory and what she might’ve gone through. Because the series starts with her escape, the audience doesn’t know what her experiences before that might’ve been. She was down there for a long time and it was helpful to think about the different points in her life and what was important to her.”

A family in turmoil.Source:Supplied

Comer said Caswill also gave her Natascha Kampusch’s book for further insight to what that kind of experience might be like.

“Kampusch was kidnapped when she was 10 and escaped when she was 18. Reading her book really opened my eyes, but there was also so much she didn’t say in it. [What was left out] opens up to me the trauma of how horrific these cases are. Just trying to understand the complicated relationship between Natascha and her captor was really helpful.”

Halfway through filming Thirteen, Comer’s agent called her and told she had to go see Room. So she went to a little cinema in Bristol by herself and watched it.

“I was afraid that it was going to be too similar and I was a bit nervous about it because Thirteen was going to be released later.

“But I came out of it thinking it was great. And they were so different. It was so interesting to watch this different character even though they had gone through such similar experiences.”

Thirteen starts on Sunday at 8.30pm on BBC First, available on Foxtel and Fetch TV.

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