A corpse is dredged from a river in a suitcase, with only a waterlogged pager in his pocket to identify him by. How will our sleuths DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and DS Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) solve the crime? The second series of ITV’s acclaimed drama started out as standard procedural, then morphed into something far more brave and devastating.
What we said: Unforgotten is so much more than a satisfying murder mystery. It is such a human show. This one has been a thoughtful and timely examination of how sexual abuse affects children. Of the physical and irreparable mental damage it does, how it changes that person for ever.
Chris Lang has just signed a deal with Netflix International, to develop a ten part romantic comedy. The series, entitled, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love‘, will be co produced by Chris and long term collaborator Francois Florentiny.
Following the huge success of ‘Tu Es Mon Fils‘ and ‘Entre Deux Mères‘, the remakes of Chris’s shows ‘A Mother’s Son‘ and ‘Torn‘, and the successful completion of filming on the remake of ‘Undeniable‘ – ‘Quand Je Serai Grande‘ – TF1 have now green lit a new adaptation of Chris’s 2010 hit thriller ‘The Reckoning.
The film will be produced by Arnaud Figueret at Paris production house Capa, and has been adapted by Chris and Julien Tessiere.
Pre-production is scheduled to begin in September.
Entre Deux Mères starring Odile Vuillemin attracted a huge overnight audience of 6.7 million, (a 29% share audience share) and garnered considerable critical acclaim on its broadcast on Monday March 27 on TF1. Entre Deux Mères is adapted from Chris Lang’s original series “Torn“, and is the second of Chris’s original series to be adapted in French, following the success of Tu es mon fils (adapted from A Mother’s Son). A third production, adapted from Undeniable is currently scheduled to begin filming this year.
On March 2, ITV confirmed the highly praised drama, Unforgotten, will return for a third series.
Created and written by screenwriter Chris Lang and produced by Mainstreet Pictures, series two of the compelling cold case crime drama gripped both viewers and critics alike. Amongst its stellar reviews, the series garnered the following accolades: “Perfectly realised” (The Observer), “Crime drama of the highest class” (The Guardian), “brilliantly and realistically complex” (TV Times), “an exhilarating mental workout” (Daily Mail) and “the detective drama of the decade” (Daily Telegraph).
Drawing on complex and current issues, the emotional drama questions everyday morality and analyses the very human stories behind crime as lead characters DCI Cassie Stuart and DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan, played by Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar, unravel the truth behind historic murders. The Guardian complimented the portrayal of Cassie and Sunny referring to them as “credible, real and refreshing” characters that love what they do.
The new six-part series will be written once again by Chris Lang and will see Cassie and Sunny delve into another intricate historical investigation, revealing a fresh web of long-buried secrets. (read more at ITV Press Centre)
Are you bored of serial killers? Have you had your fill of tortured detectives with messy personal lives? Do you worry about TV drama’s unnatural obsession with sexual sadism aimed at attractive women? I am, I have and I do, and that’s why Unforgotten, ITV’s cold case thriller, currently running on Thursday nights, is such a brilliant antidote to the most depressing of TV trends.
There are many accomplished examples of the genre from the UK and across the globe – Luther, The Fall, The Bridge, Dexter, River, True Detective, Happy Valley – but all – even the justifiably lauded Happy Valley – suffer in comparison to Chris Lang’s drama, now in its second series.
Unforgotten has a placid and unfrenzied air that could almost be described as old-fashioned. In an era where mainstream TV drama is constantly being forced to adhere to a cinematic, often hyper-real aesthetic (see almost all of the above examples), Unforgotten is rooted in social realism. It deals with the discovery of a man’s remains in the River Lea in East London who, it turns out, is David Walker, a Conservative Party consultant who disappeared in 1990.
With an almost Dickensian eye for the state of the nation, Lang weaves together a large cast of characters connected to his death – a gay barrister (played by Mark Bonnar) in the middle of adopting a child with his husband in Brighton; a Muslim secondary school teacher (Badria Timimi), happily married and living in Salisbury but who once worked as a prostitute; a dedicated NHS nurse (Rosie Cavaliero) who has a difficult relationship with her well-heeled Hampstead family on account of her past as a political agitator.
These are fascinating characters, but crucially they are not extreme ones. Lang depicts them as ordinary people, good-hearted and stable, who may (or may not) have done something terrible earlier in their lives and are now being forced to confront the past at a time when they are growing comfortable in middle age.
Lang has explained that the inspiration for this series came, in part, from watching the case of Stuart Hall, the former presenter of It’s a Knockout who, having previously pleaded not guilty to 14 historic cases of indecent assault, suddenly switched his suit. Lang carefully addresses that gap between the person we think we know and the reality, the pain that comes with readdressing who someone really is.
But perhaps the most oddly subversive thing about Unforgotten is the way in which it portrays the police. DCI Cassie Stuart and DS Sunny Khan (played by Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar) are nice people who are good at their jobs and care for their colleagues and the people enmeshed in the David Walker case.
They are not flawed geniuses (like Idris Elba’s Luther), nor do they have some sort of mental disorder (like Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson in The Fall), nor are they mavericks who get results against the odds (pretty much every TV detective of the past 30 years).
In their unremarkable, unquestioning dedication, Stuart and Khan resemble Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison in her earliest incarnation – before the producers of Prime Suspect decided to give Tennison a drink problem, a move which prompted series creator Lynda La Plante to disown the show.
The idea of Stuart and Khan going home after a long day’s graft and cooking a lasagne hardly sounds like a recipe for gripping drama, yet these characters are never dull. Much of this is down to Walker and Bhaskar who both give sensitive, emotionally smart performances.
But there is also something endearing about their essential niceness which Chris Lang paints in subtle shades – notably Khan’s disastrous attempts at online dating and Stuart’s gently fractious relationship with her father (who has a few secrets of his own, and is played, rather disarmingly by Peter Egan, best known for cuddly sitcom roles).
These and indeed the rest of Unforgotten’s serpentine sprawl of characters are sympathetic because they are real: not because they are the grand guignol constructs of some show-off writer determined to impress TV executives with the darkness of his imagination.
I hope that Unforgotten will start a new trend in TV detective drama – one that puts character first, unpeels intelligent layers of plotting, and remains resolutely resistant to extreme personality traits. The serial killer thriller has had its day.
In the wake of the success of French adaptations of A Mother’s Son, and Torn, Chris Lang’s series Undeniable is being adapted as a single film , to be broadcast on TF1, titled, Quand Je Serai Grande Je te Tuerai, starring Laetitia Milot, Antoine Duléry and Marie-Anne Chazel. The four-week shoot begins in Frebruary 2017 on locationon the Île de Re.
Nicola Walker chats about the return of detective drama Unforgotten, the phenomenon that was Spooks, and how she got her big acting break in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Lorraine, ITV every weekday on ITV at 8.30am.
Sanjeev Bhaskar on Steve Wright BBC Radio 2
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“Me, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin – all on stage” Sanjeev talks to Steve Wright about series two of Unforgotten and a special show with two of the Pythons.
Nicola Walker on Graham Norton
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Nicola Walker chatting about ITV’s Unforgotten on BBC Radio 2 with Graham Norton
Sanjeev Bhaskar on Loose Ends
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Clive Anderson talks to Sanjeev Bhaskar about his career and about Season Two of “Unforgotten” on Loose Ends.
Season Two of Chris Lang’s critically acclaimed drama “Unforgotten” premièred on ITVi n January, 2017.
Synopsis
A body is discovered in a sealed suitcase in the silt of the River Lea. With the body preserved but clearly having been there a number of years, DCI Cassie Stuart and DI Sunny Khan begin the complicated task of identifying the victim and investigating his murder.
With an expensive watch found on the body the only evidence to go on, the item is sent to forensics who suggest approaching a watchmaker who may have repaired it to find out more about its owner.
Meanwhile, we meet four seemingly unconnected suspects who may have a link to the victim – DI Tessa Nixon who is struggling with her loner son, nurse Marion Kelsey who works with chronically ill children, Brighton-based barrister Colin Osborne who is in the process of adopting a little girl with his husband, and teacher Sara Mahmoud who is interviewing for a new position in a school that needs turning around. How did any of them knew the victim, though, and why would one of them kill him?
