ITV Drama UNFORGOTTEN S4 PRODUCTION NOTES 2020
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UNFORGOTTEN SERIES 4 Introduction 3 Foreword by creator, writer & exec producer Chris Lang 5 Interview with Nicola Walker 7 Interview with Sanjeev Bhaskar 11 Interview with Susan Lynch 15 Interview with Liz White 17 Interview with Phaldut Sharma 20 Interview with Andy Nyman 23 Episode one synopsis 25 Cast and Production credits episode one 26 ITV press office Press contact: Natasha Bayford | [email protected] Picture contact: Patrick Smith | [email protected] Mainstreet Pictures Press contact: Lisa Vanoli | [email protected] 2 BAFTA nominated actors Nicola Walker (Last Tango In Halifax, The Split) and Sanjeev Bhaskar (Yesterday, Goodness Gracious Me) reprise their roles as DCI Cassie Stuart and DI Sunny Khan in the highly-anticipated fourth series of critically acclaimed drama, Unforgotten. Produced by independent production company Mainstreet Pictures (Gold Digger, Age Before Beauty) in partnership with Masterpiece, and devised and written by acclaimed screenwriter Chris Lang (Innocent, Dark Heart), the new six-part series charts a fresh investigation into another emotionally-charged cold case murder. The main cast is joined by Sheila Hancock (New Tricks, Delicious), Susan Lynch (Killing Eve, Apple Tree Yard), Phaldut Sharma (Hanna, EastEnders), Liz White (Life On Mars, Ackley Bridge), Andy Nyman (Wanderlust, Peaky Blinders), Clare Calbraith (Baptiste, Little Boy Blue) and Lucy Speed (Marcella, National Treasure), along with returning actors Peter Egan (Downton Abbey, Hold The Sunset), Alastair Mackenzie (Deep Water, Cold Feet), Carolina Main (Blood, Grantchester), Lewis Reeves (Uncle, Inspector George Gently) and Jordan Long (PriMe Suspect 1973, SS-GB). The fourth series opens with the discovery of a dismembered body in a scrap metal yard, which the team believe has been stored in a domestic freezer for thirty years. A unique Millwall Football Club tattoo leads to the victim being identified as Matthew Walsh, a young man in his mid-twenties who went missing in March 1990. 3 The team quickly track the purchase of the freezer to Robert Fogerty, but they are disappointed to learn he’s recently died a lonely, broken man. On looking further into his past, they discover a drink driving conviction on the same night their victim, Matthew Walsh, went missing, and intriguingly there were four passengers in the car with him at the time. As the investigation progresses, we are introduced to Ram Sidhu and his wife Anna who are expecting their first baby together in London; Liz Baildon and her fiancée Janet who live in Cambridge; Fiona Grayson, her partner Geoff and their children in the Peak District; and Dean Barton and his wife Marnie who live in Rochester with their disabled son, Jack, and his younger sibling, Casper. All in their late forties, they appear to be in a good place, but the investigation has the potential to shatter their reputations, family relationships and the lives they’ve built over the last 30 years. Meanwhile, after making the decision to retire from the police force for her own sanity and wellbeing, Cassie faces an impossible dilemma when she learns she isn’t entitled to her full pension payment unless she completes her thirty years of service. Disappointed and angry with her superiors and the system, Cassie has to make the gut-wrenching decision to return to work. Whilst her relationship with John is going strong, she also faces difficult times with both her son, who has moved back home, and her father, Martin, who is struggling with early dementia. Mainstreet Pictures’ Sally Haynes and Laura Mackie said: "We are proud to have made a fourth series of Unforgotten. Chris has created yet another memorable and emotional story that we are sure will delight the series’ loyal viewers." Writer Chris Lang added: “I am so excited to be bringing back the Unforgotten team for a fourth series, as Cassie and Sunny take on perhaps their most challenging case to date. Once again, we have assembled an astonishing cast.” Unforgotten has gone from strength to strength since its first outing in 2015, proving hugely popular with viewers and critics alike. The series has received two BAFTA wins and a further nomination for its compelling performances, whilst the finale of the third series received average consolidated figures of 6.9m and a 28% share. The series has been commissioned by ITV’s Head Of Drama, Polly Hill, with Mainstreet Pictures’ Sally Haynes and Laura Mackie as Executive Producers, along with creator Chris Lang and Rebecca Eaton for Masterpiece. Andy Wilson (World On Fire) returns to direct, whilst Guy de Glanville (Gold Digger) is the producer. The series is distributed internationally by BBC Studios and is a co-production with Masterpiece. 4 Foreword Chris Lang Series creator, writer and executive producer So when Unforgotten 3 broadcast in the summer of 2018, and we were immediately asked to make series 4, Nicola, Sanjeev and I, went out for lunch and all agreed that although we were delighted to be making another series, we needed a short break to recharge our batteries. Which is why we did not end up going into pre-production on series 4 till October 2019, to start filming in January 2020. Oh. If only we had known. When lockdown happened, we were eleven weeks in to shooting and just four weeks shy of completing principal photography. So near and yet so far - suddenly those four extra weeks I took off to learn macramé now seemed absurd. More absurd even than they seemed at the time. We resumed shooting on 21 September, and finally got everything safely shot, on Friday, 16 October. A few beers were had that night. And I guess it was as we started editing, and I started to watch footage which I had mostly not seen for nine months that I was reminded of what ‘Unforgotten’ actually is. Because seeing those stories afresh, and discussing them again with my creative partners, after such a long break, reminded me that it is not at heart a detective show, or a thriller, or a whodunit, but just a show about people. Flawed, ordinary people, with messy, complicated lives, who have, like all of us, made mistakes. Most of them are small, even the more egregious mistakes tend to come from a place of weakness and selfishness and damage rather than pure evil, and they are generally mistakes (not always, see series 3!) that we can all relate to. And I think series 4 really mines that idea and then ties it back in to another key component of the series – the police. So Unforgotten 4 will once again explore the fallout from and the investigation in to, an historic murder case, but the primary theme of this series, will be society’s relationship with the police. It’s still a very unusual thing to decide to become a police officer. To become a copper marks you out for the rest of your life, it sets you apart from everyone you grew up with, and there is an ‘otherness’ you take ownership of, the day you put on that uniform for the first time, that doesn’t leave you until the day you die and we atomise this idea in series 4. 5 Foreword Chris Lang continued: The investigation will show the best of the police and the worst, and at a time of unprecedented cutbacks, it will ask a number of difficult questions about the police force as an institution. It will ask what do we expect them to be? It will ask if that is compatible with what they are capable of being? It will ask how much we now take for granted the fact that on a daily basis, these men and women walk towards danger. And, after decades of bruising revelations about their probity, it will ask if we can ever again truly trust them. It is at once a love letter and a ‘J’accuse’. Welcome to Unforgotten 4. 6 Cast interview Nicola Walker | DCI Cassie Stuart Nicola Walker says the uncertainty of 2020 helped create the right atmosphere to bring DCI Cassie Stuart back in the fourth series of Unforgotten. She explains: “Coming back to the role in January (2020) was so exciting because of the storyline and the suspects this year it’s very timely. Our writer Chris Lang seems to have a knack for that… I don’t know how he does it but it tends to be a conversation with the audience about what is going on exactly in our society at the time. There is a lot this year that chimes with big conversations we have all been having. “Then through lockdown it was really strange because you are carrying this character around, all you’re thinking about is this storyline and realising a few weeks in that you have to let it all go, including the lines… “But it meant when we came back the one thing I needed was four weeks advance notice to learn the lines again - you can’t hold them in your head for that long. That’s what happened. I had to re-read scripts to get the story back in my head and get the lines back in. 7 Cast interview Nicola Walker continued: “That was a muscle memory – the first few days back, there are a lot of outtakes of me going ‘sorry, what’s the line?’ because your brain is out of the habit of carrying around that much dialogue. It took about three days and then it was back, which was a relief. I am sure everyone feels this… you come back to a job and you think ‘I don’t know if I can still do this.’ It is a really strange feeling.