For five series, Unforgotten was my go-to comfort television. Yes, the crime drama is always about a grisly murder, and every season begins with the gruesome discovery of remains that have been buried for years or even decades. And yes, there are plenty of scenes with body parts laid out on mortuary tables, being picked over by pathologists who say things such as, “this artery does show signs of gaping”, as if they’ve just won the lottery. But in its combination of strong casts, ample twists and the inevitable dispensation of justice, it always felt soothing, somehow. It is occasionally workmanlike, but reliably solid.
As it reaches its sixth season, though, I worry that the wheels are coming off. The structure is largely the same every time – another reason it is so comforting, perhaps – and this seems to be no different. A body is discovered, it turns out to be a cold case, so it reaches the desks of the friendly, efficient and only mildly troubled cops we know and love. It throws a handful of suspects into the air and dares you to guess how these people could possibly be connected, then it waits for them to come crashing down to earth, as the pieces finally slot into place. It sprinkles it all with a touch of concern for the private lives of the detectives, and kicks back in nice, fancy kitchens as it works out whodunnit and why.
The new old case arrives when an adult ribcage is discovered, having been submerged in fictional marshland in east London. This is a wonderful excuse for the scene-stealing pathologist to offload a lot of technical exposition about how a chopped-up body might look, versus one that has naturally “dispersed” over the years. Such moments are not for the squeamish. But the show has maintained its dry sense of humour. DCI Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan, who replaced Nicola Walker as the boss at the beginning of season five) surveys the scene, then offers her professional opinion: “Realistically, how far could you chuck an arm?”
Her initially frosty relationship with stalwart DI Sunil Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) has definitely thawed, and the pair appear to be on good terms. As usual, they remain excellent at their jobs, while struggling with every aspect of their lives outside work. Having reluctantly stayed with her philandering husband for the sake of the children, Jess suspects that he is still at it, while poor old Sunny is lonely, having lost both his best mate and his partner Sal. Dining alone is all well and good, but not in the presence of an excessively friendly waiter who overuses the word “awesome”.
This series takes us to County Cork, where a “Britannia News” reporter (MyAnna Buring) is spouting off on screen about the case of a stateless woman, who has a different name but sounds a lot like Shamima Begum; behind the scenes, she is having the beginnings of a crisis of conscience. In London, a history lecturer (Victoria Hamilton) is hauled in front of her superiors for recommending a book with a controversial title (“We’re all fucking terrified of them,” she says, of her students), while also trying to parent her wayward daughter. And in Deal, Kent, a young man with autism (Maximilian Fairley) is living in squalor and struggling to care for his ailing mother. How could they be connected to each other, let alone to the severed spine found on the marshes?
The problem is that Unforgotten is trying to do an awful lot of things with an awful lot of hot-button topics. This is not out of character; the last series was about austerity. But it now feels as if it is hamfistedly stuffing the plot with politics, and doing neither plot nor politics very well as a result. It covers – deep breath – illegal Channel crossings, clickbait-hunting far-right news presenters, how cancel culture is affecting the university syllabus, and the misogynistic and racist online radicalisation of vulnerable people. Of course it is easy to grasp that, in the real world, these are all interconnected. But on television, in a drama, it starts to feel as if you’ve been trapped inside a newspaper comments section and somebody has locked the door behind you.
Unforgotten is wading into the culture wars, then, from the vantage point of its gorgeous kitchen islands. I’m not sure that is quite what anyone needs, nor what Unforgotten does best. I have only seen the first episode, so perhaps it will do what it always does, and bring together its disparate strands into one cohesive and predictably satisfying conclusion. Right now, though, it is no longer as soothing as it was.
• Unforgotten aired on ITV1 and is on ITVX now.
