Don’t read on if you haven’t finished Series 4 of Unforgotten for major spoilers are within
“We are who we are – I don’t think you can ever really change that”
It’s a good job that Series 4 of Unforgotten aired as spring arrives in the air and the promise of easements is finally taking some of the sting out of lockdown life. For had it been on in the endless depths of the last few dark months, I don’t think I could have coped. Indeed, I’m not sure I can still really cope now even with it being 23 degrees outside.
They killed Nicola Walker! Again! I’ve barely recovered from how they did Ruth dirty, but given the way that episode 5 ended and the way people were talking at the beginning of episode 6, the writing was on the wall. And so as Sunny finally cracked the case and unwound the puzzle of Matthew Walsh’s death and the four young police officers intimately involved with it, DCI Cassie Stuart breathed her last.
I read that creator Chris Lang had to rewrite much of the final episode(s) in order for the show to resume filming after lockdown #1 (it had completed about 80%) and so I wonder how much of an impact that had. It seemed curious that Walker was so absent from her final episode and whilst you can understand why Sheila Hancock didn’t reappear, I was disappointed that Liz White and Susan Lynch didn’t feature quite so much either in the rollout of what happened. Both were so very good, unsurprisingly so, adding to the list of beautiful performances of fucked-up characters in which Lang excels.
I struggled a bit more with Phaldut Sharma and Andy Nyman’s Ram and Dean, mainly because of the drug dealing strand that followed on from the murder and cover-up. GIven how much we were being asked to empathise, particularly with Dean’s newly remodelled man, it felt like a big leap to be asked to forgive some major cocaine dealing. So ultimately, Series 4 felt like a good rather than great season and with the announcement that Series 5 will be happening, I can’t help but wonder if they shouldn’t be leaving this alone with those other cold cases…
