Unforgotten is back and it’s as gripping and grisly as ever
When Nicola Walker’s cynical sleuth Cassie Stuart was killed off at the end of series four of ITV’s Unforgotten, the general assumption was that the cold case thriller would go off the boil in her absence. Many fans feared the show might even have suffered a fatal blow. Unforgotten without deadpan DCI Stuart was like Luther without Idris Elba, Teletubbies minus Tinky-Winky, Poirot without a prying, moustachioed Belgian roving about solving crimes.
Such worries have proved unfounded. The big twist was that the true star of Unforgotten was always its underlying premise. Each season, police stumble upon a long-forgotten crime scene – laying bare a conspiracy that binds together a seemingly random group of people who share a dark secret yet have been furtively getting on with their lives. The formula stays the same for season six, as the show welcomes back Walker’s replacement, DCI Jess James (Sinéad Keenan), who teams up with series regular DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) to solve the mystery of a partially dismembered body uncovered at Whitney Marsh in east London.
It’s gripping stuff, and quite distinct from the many other criminal capers clogging up the schedules. Unforgotten is far less silly than Death in Paradise and its killer copycats. But nor does it cosh you over the head with unrelenting misery, as tends to be the case with dramas inspired by true stories. Instead, it steers a middle ground between tacky and traumatising. Jess and Sunny are professionals investigating dark deeds while at all times behaving like reasonable people who aren’t averse to a quick pint at the end of a long day.
The action begins in the traditional Unforgotten fashion, with that body turning up in the marsh. Enter Jess and Sunny – alarmed, but, let’s face it, not that surprised, to discover signs of violence, including evidence that the victim had their arm lopped off.
While they’re getting to grips with the grisly details, the series introduces this year’s cast of potential suspects. They include Victoria Hamilton as a university lecturer about to be raked over the coals for recommending to one her students a book about race with a provocative title, and Elham Ehsas as an Afghan immigrant training for his UK citizenship test.
There is also Maximilian Fairley as a neurodivergent man in Kent with a penchant for conspiracy theories, and MyAnna Buring as a right-wing commentator on a GB News-type news network, whose heart really isn’t in her rhetoric (her husband is in denial about an injury that has left him wheelchair-bound).
Amid this rumpled rogues’ gallery, Jess and Sunny are an endearing double-act. Bhaskar’s Khan is just the right mix of grumpy and idealistic to be believable. Meanwhile, Keenan avoids comparisons with Walker by playing a much different character. She is no less hard-bitten but more cautious than Cassie, who rarely stood on ceremony. Not that she doesn’t have her own worries – including a previously unfaithful husband (Andrew Lancel) whose scarf is adorned with a strand of hair belonging to another woman.
Unforgotten is clever in how it taps into real-world issues – storylines about a right-wing news network and refugees are clearly plugged into modern politics, but the script does not lecture the viewer. Never preachy or self-righteous, Unforgotten is about real people in extraordinary circumstances and remains one of the most unique and compelling crime shows around.
