‘Unforgotten’ Boss Reveals How Season 5 Addresses That Major Character Death

Fans won’t be instantly smitten with Unforgotten’s new detective chief inspector, and that’s fine with Chris Lang, the creator and writer of the engrossing British cold-case drama, returning for Season 5 on Sunday, September 3, on PBS.

He anticipated it would take time for viewers to warm up to Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan), who replaces Nicola Walker’s Cassie Stuart in the Masterpiece series’ fifth season following the beloved character’s death. Lang’s solution: to have her still-grieving colleagues, led by Detective Inspector Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar, above, with Keenan), also struggle to forge a connection with their boss, even though nine months have passed since Cassie died.

“I knew the audience would come to it feeling a huge sense of loss and probably some resentment,” Lang says. “So I wanted to dive straight in to a man who’s still wrestling with grief and loss, which is impacting his professional life and also perhaps more profoundly his personal life.”

Nicola Walker as Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten Season 4 (Mainstreet Pictures LTD)

Jessie certainly doesn’t make a good impression in the first few episodes (of six). She’s unpleasant and distracted when she meets the team, but to be fair, an hour before she started her new job, her husband (Andrew Lancel) confessed his infidelity. Sunny—facing his own relationship strife with his fiancée, Sal (Michelle Bonnard)—gradually grows to respect Jessie, who, according to Lang, isn’t as different from Cassie as she first seems.

“They’re both extraordinary and incredibly ordinary,” he says. “They’re extraordinary characters with unusual brains, but [they’re also] people that the audience can look at and go, ‘I understand you and I like you for all your strengths and weaknesses.’”

As Jessie and Sunny take on a heartbreaking “historical murder” (bones are found in the chimney of a London house undergoing renovation), Lang hopes viewers will also engage with the four persons of interest: a retired politician (Ian McElhinney), a successful restaurateur (Martina Laird), an expat (Max Rinehart) living in Paris and a young heroin addict (Rhys Yates). All are guilty of past transgressions.

“They might have done something heinous,” Lang says, “but there’s a lot more to them than that.”

Unforgotten, Season 5 Premiere Sunday, September 3, 9/8c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)