ITV new drama: Unforgotten

Publish date: 2024-06-14

Celebmix attended the press screening of ‘Unforgotten’ this morning at the Soho Hotel in London. Steve November, director of drama at ITV introduced the six part series. In his opinion it is a fantastic drama about a detective duo. November told us: ‘It’s like making a wish list of everyone we want to work with and put it into a series.’

The whole idea behind the drama is: ‘a crime less serious because times passed?’ Time in this case is 39 years.

Chris Lang, the writer of the series, as well as ‘Torn’, ‘Amnesia’ and ‘A Mother’s Son’ made it clear what his thought process was behind the making of the series. Lang stated: ‘The starting point for Unforgotten was the recent spate of historic crimes.  I kept asking myself what it must be like for someone who is convicted of a crime thirty or forty years old, what must it be like to have lived a whole life effectively pretending to be something that you’re not. And then also, what must it be like to those close to the guilty-their family, their friends, their work colleagues, what must it be like to discover a person you loved, trusted, admired and respected, had done terrible things in the past. And so the idea of Unforgotten began to slowly develop.’

Nicola Walker who plays the role of DCI Cassie Stuart explained to us what questions and thoughts come to your mind when you watch the drama. Walker said: ‘How do you live when you have done something in your past that you have to completely bury? How do you present this alternative face and personality that you then believe is real? You re-write your history. When something awful has happened, how do you live?’

DS ‘Sunny’ Khan played by the well-known actor Sanjeev Bhaskar gave his opinion of secrets: ‘You can keep a secret. You can lie. But I remember talking to a barrister once and he said, It’s very difficult to sustain a lie under cross-examination. That’s the thing. You can keep a secret. You cannot say anything. But once you’re questioned on it, that’s when it’s very difficult.’

Tom Courtenay who plays Eric Slater expressed his feelings on always being in a wheelchair as part of his role in the drama. He advocates the use of a wheelchair on set as: ‘beauty of acting in a wheelchair is that you always have somewhere to sit.’

Trevor Eve makes an impressive performance as Sir Phillip Cross. Trevor tells us about Phillip: ‘Sir Phillip Cross is a self-made millionaire. He’s about to be given a peerage by the government and become their entrepreneur Czar of industry and business.’

Unforgotten tells us that the world we have  created is far from idyllic and we look back at where it started to go wrong. The drama is set in the 1970s and with such revelations as Jimmy Saville, the idea of someone being guilty and letting time slip by without the individual meeting any consequences is the injustice the drama is based on.

After having the privilege of viewing the first episode of the series I would highly recommend watching the drama this September as it is an incredibly interesting and stimulating. Not to mention well written.  With a first class set this will surely turn out to be a first class drama.

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