The most recent series of "Unforgotten" is the first without Nicola Walker's lead character of Cassie, who of course died at the end of Series 4. We quickly learn that Sanjeev Bhaskar's Sunny character has declined to step into her shoes having turned down promotion and so we're introduced to the team"s new leader, Sinead Keenan's Jess James (yes, really).
It's fair to say they don't hit it off immediately, with both beset by relationship issues in their personal lives. Sunny's new girl-friend is unexpectedly pregnant and he is uncertain about impending parenthood while her happy marriage falls apart the morning she starts the new job as she catches her husband out in an affair.
The back-stories of the lead characters have always been highlighted in previous series but for some reason to me this time they came across to me as less than credible for both. Where are Sunny's daughters for one thing and would he really behave so unfeelingly towards his new partner, especially when she suffers a miscarriage? The main reason offered for his unsympathetic actions is his struggle to get over the loss of Cassie which I didn't quite buy either, just as I couldn't see why he would turn down the promotion when in practice we see him leading the team just as much as Jess. Her messed-up life affects her work too, but again it all seems a bit overegged when we learn that hubby's dalliance was with her own sister.
The cold-case murder story the team has to solve concerns a young woman, the body of whom, six years before, was stuffed up the chimney of a once well-to-do London flat. The action is as intricately plotted as ever, drawing in an elderly, titled hard-right Conservative House of Lords politician, a mixed-race middle-aged woman struggling with alcoholism and physically abusing her chef husband, a mid-European ex-social worker trying to make a new start in France and finally an unemployed poverty-stricken young man who lives in squalor with his drug-addict girl-friend, reduced to petty crime to survive.
As ever, the story spins out in different directions as we delve deeper into the lives of each of the suspects, while the discovery of another body only further muddies the already murky waters.
Over the six episodes, in time-honoured fashion, the pieces are put together and the case solved through dogged detective-work, Sunny and Jess have resolved their issues and the team is in harmony again but while the support acting of the investigators and the suspects too was of a high standard, this time I did mind the repetition aspect of the narrative and I find I can now anticipate almost precisely when a suspect is going to have a distorted flashback which ultimately adds nothing to the story. I also felt and I say this as the very antithesis of a Conservative supporter, there was too much political bias in the characterisation of the Tory lord and his wife.
I still enjoyed the series and fully expect it to return for another run but am now wondering how much more mileage there is left in characterisation and plotting for what has been up to now a consistently high-quality series.