The third series of Chris Lang’s Unforgotten is another corker, and not just because of Nicola Walker, honest!
“We’ve all done things of which we are ashamed”
The cold cases of Unforgotten have rightly proved a success for their alternative tale on crime drama, putting a real focus on the victims rather than the crimes, a neat corrective to the sometimes exploitative gaze that can characterise this genre. And this third series maintained that strong record (quick review of episodes 1 and 2 here)
A measure of the regard in which Unforgotten is held is the sheer quality of its cast. With James Fleet, Alex Jennings, Kevin McNally and Neil Morrissey as its lead quartet, it added Sasha Behar, Emma Fielding, Indra Ové and Amanda Root as their partners, and then threw in Siobhan Redmond and Sara Stewart as exes as well.
Which meant that no matter which of the suspects we were following, they were all as compelling as each other. The dodgy doctor, the child porn suspect, the fraudulent salesman, the game-show host, all with their own tangled family lives, all with their own array of secrets to hide, and all struggling to deal with the way the past is unspooling.
And what a horribly simplistic way to round it all out, free from conspiracies or real twistiness, just a confession of straight-up chilling horror, a psychopath in the midst and a reaction of real revulsion, a believably human response from Walker’s nigh on perfect Cassie which again turns away from crime cliché, the grizzled determination to barrel on as if it is all OK, instead acknowledging that some things are just too horrific to dismiss out of hand.
