The following is a series of posts on my FB as I binged the series and I will just reproduce them here. This is an outstanding series that hardly anyone talks about.
I have a few minutes and I hope it will be enough.
Every CNY, I will always unearth some TV show that I have never seen before and binge between house visiting. Some noteworthy ones we have seen in the past years include The Leftovers and Succession. This year we are diving into Unforgotten which is up to S6 which will happen some time this year but I have only gotten my hands on S1 to S4 which featured one of my fave actresses, Nicola Walker. She is one of those rare actresses you can see her once and she has already wormed her way into your heart. I first saw her in River and what a fine performance it was.
This is a police procedural and it opens with a body. Actually it is skeleton and it has been lying in a shallow grave for 39 years. So it is essentially a cold case and all the investigation had been filed up in a dusty file in some godforsaken storage. Enters DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and her partner DI Sunil Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) who will find out the identity of the 39 year old skeleton and the perpetrator/s who put him/her there.
I have to confess that even before the detectives do their thing I already have good vibes because the theme song is All We Do by Oh Wonder, one of those bands hardly anybody knows about. I have all their albums and there is that.
The first episode is a piece of brilliant writing and a showcase of masterclass acting. So many disparate plot-lines are presented and my head was going in circles trying to hold all the information because something tells me a bomb is going to drop. We have a clergyman, an entrepreneur, a community worker and a wheelchair-bound husband caring for his wife who has dementia. Sure enough, right in the final scene of the first episode my jaw dropped to the floor and Choo next to me went “oh my god!” Just like that we are hooked.
I love the procedural work and the forensic science. Maybe it is because I have been watching so many American stuff, but there is such a freshness with this British show. The two lead detectives aren’t Sherlock-clever and unlike their American or even Korean counterparts they don’t need to have personal demons to make them feel real. They just need to do their job so well for you to have the upmost respect for them and their craft. They don’t need to be alcoholics, have a dead beloved or even have ghosts in their lives. Sure, they do have family problems but who doesn’t? The show also doesn’t need to create a bleak atmosphere like those Scandinavian shows or what have you. You don’t need atmosphere when the depravity of man are slowly coming into focus.
I love the drama. Does 39 years wipe a slate clean? Does time erase pain? Is there a word to describe a mother’s pain in not knowing what has happened to her only son? There are none. No word exists to describe the pain a single mother has to suffer in not knowing what has happened to her only son. Does being a useful citizen or a great human being wipe off every ounce of guilt? I don’t know… but I am having a delirious relish in seeing the vice of justice slowly closing in on the truth of what happened 39 years ago.
We still have 2 episodes to go with S1 but we are getting ready for reunion dinner. Choo already said we will be done tonight. When she declares a statement like this you know this is magnificent stuff. See ya all 24 episodes later.
Happy Chinese New Year to my friends and readers!
We were done with S1 on the dot at midnight. It was too late to collect my thoughts and write something but now I can.
I love the ending. It’s one of my faves – you win but you realised you also lost so much. The thing I love about this S1 is everybody is so human. Every action stems from a human need without any of those out-of-body big twists.
I love how the show interrogates the theme of the weight of sin in so many facets. How the gravity of sin can hold you in a prison; how it can make you even bolder to do anything to stop it from resurfacing; how it affects and has repercussions on all your loved ones. I particularly loved watching Beth’s story unfold. She definitely needed to go through hell and her husband needed the time to come to terms with her past actions. My heart sank to the pits at one point and some time later it climbed up the warm heavens. I was so happy for them.
That’s it. It’s onwards to S2 today whenever we can find the time.
We were done with S2 this morning. It’s very difficult to write about this without dropping the plot which will rob you of the fun of discovery. So I will be intentionally vague.
S2 is storytelling heaven. It takes the themes presented in S1 to the stratosphere. It’s very discursive and thought-provoking. It made us question the sanctity of marriage, the purpose of prison, the rigor of punishment, where the law is particularly grey and outside of war when is killing justified. You won’t believe the number of times Choo and I shout words like “damn muthaf6&ker” and “a piece of shit”.
S2 retains the grammar set in S1 with some clever tweaks that give it a new coat of paint. It begins as usual with a body. This time it is preserved body in a suitcase in River Lea (subject of an Adele song). We quickly see 4 possible suspects but this time the bombshell doesn’t drop at the end of ep1. It drops at the midway point.
The sleight of hand is sheer class. The plot seems to be treading a predetermined path, then it didn’t. I won’t say more about the plot from here on out.
One of aspects that I love about this show about how remarkable Cassie and Sunil are in being so unremarkable. Sometimes it is so cool to develop characters through what they do (go also look at Day of the Jackal) and their work ethics. They are dogged in their search for justice for the dead even if they have been dead for two dozens of years. No skeletons in their closet, no personal demons, no dark pasts, just plain people with family problems. I told Choo isn’t it so cool they don’t fall in love like all the American cop shows. But I think Chris Lang heard me and planted a romantic scene. However I take nothing away from the brilliant scene with how they handled it.
This season I particularly love all the drama from all the principals, especially Sara and Hassan’s devastating story. You would think no marriage can ever survive what they go through, but the way they persevere lays the blueprint of what a marriage should be. The closures to all the stories are amazing and our tears were well-earned.
The ending is so satisfying and put us on a plane of euphoria where only good storytelling can do. As much as the perpetrators deserve their comeuppance, the ones who knew and stood by and did nothing are just as guilty.
S2 surpassed S1 in every aspect. This is storytelling heaven and how nobody talks about this is absolutely criminal. Tonight we will begin S3 and we are already counting down the minutes. It’s house visiting time but my soul is on the show.
Choo has no work today, so we snuggled up for S3. We are onwards to S4 now.
I will do a closure to both seasons later but I have to say I know how S4 ends. I didn’t tell Choo because I am a nice person. I am counting down the minutes this season ends.
We hit the ending of ep5 of S4 and it’s the ending I dreaded to see. Choo kept uttering “why why why”. One of the most painful endings ever and we are hoping it doesn’t hit the inevitable. One last episode to go.
We are done. This is without a scintilla of doubt one of the best shows we have seen. You are now probably thinking where the f&*k did he find the word “scintilla” and is it even a word. It is and where else can I expand my vocabulary than by watching a British show. I doubt American stuff can teach me new words.
The thing is I really mean it. Across 4 seasons creator-writer Chris Lang constantly ups the game and takes us into a world of crime and investigation. The writing has a clarity like no other. It isn’t just the crime he turns his microscope on but also the relationships and how secret and lies can weigh a person down. So we get 4-6 mini-dramas on top of the procedural spine.
S3 has a helluva villain. If you ever want to know the face of true evil, this is the one. The brilliant part is the revelation only happened in the last episode and that Seven’s what’s-in-the-box ending really put the shiver in me.
S3 also deepens the theme of how secret and lies can put chains around the feet of anyone. It also goes to show that a lot of times you can never know everything about a person.
When we hit S4 I dreaded it. When I was researching what to binge during this CNY holiday I noticed Nicola Walker doesn’t return in S5. One doesn’t need a lot brain power to know what will probably happen to her character. At one point Choo was going to”no no no” then “why why why” and in the end her tears started rolling down as was mine. It was a superb ending and audacious. Who the heck destroys the essence of a great show when you are on such a superb run? What I read was S5 won everyone’s hearts back. The disc is sitting in my Amazon cart and I doubt it will be in there long.
Across 4 seasons Lang does a superb job of keeping everything fresh, full of aha and wow moments but never to the point of the twists feeling like they stretch credulity. Everything feels so organic and across 4 seasons all the characters and I am also including the secondary characters grow in unexpected ways.
I like the relationship between Cassie and Sunny. They are colleagues but also such close friends. It is nice to know that both of them can prove that a man and a woman can be good friends and not be lovers, so don’t believe what Harry said in When Harry Met Sally. Their mutual respect for each other is so palpable and the way they read people is so profound. Just watch and listen to how they interrogate suspects.
The show didn’t show any dip in form throughout the 4 seasons that I have seen but for me the best season was the second. That one was a masterclass in storytelling and only up to the final moment you will see how everything fits.
The mystery to me is how no one has ever talked about this. Watch this.
