Yahoo News Unforgotten writer says series 4 almost didn't happen
ITV announced last month that its hit crime drama Unforgotten would be returning for a fourth series, but creator Chris Lang has revealed that the show's future wasn't always guaranteed.
Back in 2017, series star Nicola Walker suggested that Lang was "not looking to make this [show] again and again" and the writer has now told Digital Spy that he decided to do a fourth series quite late in the day.
"I got to the end of writing season three, and wasn't really sure, one way or another, whether I wanted to write another one," he admitted.
"Then when we were in post-production and watching it, I got to about episode 2 or 3, and I absolutely, unequivocally, suddenly had a moment where I went, 'No, no – I have to finish this story.'
"Then I just said to my co-executives that I wanted to do another one. Unequivocally, I knew.
"It's hard to know [whether you want to continue] until you've gone through the process of making it. But when we were editing, I just thought, 'There's more story to tell of Cassie (Walker) and Sunny (Sanjeev Bhaskar)' – so we'll certainly do this [fourth series], and then we'll see where we are at the end of that."
Lang said that a fifth series of Unforgotten, which follows detectives Cassie and Sunny as they solve cold cases of disappearance and murder, is again not a foregone conclusion. "That'll be 24 episodes [after the fourth series]. That's quite a lot. And there are other things I want to do, of course – different challenges and different genres I want to engage with.
Related: How ITV's Dark Heart evolved from a 2016 pilot episode to the revamped new series
"Unforgotten takes a huge amount of time, and I spend my life being offered other things, and having to always turn them down.
"I won't carry on doing it forever, because I want to explore other worlds as well. But I could not be more delighted to be doing series four. I know what the story is. I've started writing it. And I will love, over the next nine months, bringing the characters back to life again."
Of course, once the scripts are written, the next challenge will be matching the stellar casts of series past, with acting legends like Sir Tom Courtenay, Bernard Hill and Trevor Eve and top talent like Mark Bonnar and Rosie Cavaliero appearing in previous Unforgotten outings.
Lang confessed: "I emailed our casting director the other day and said, 'Mate, how are we going to top that?' And they said, 'Yeah, but we've said that every series!'
"It's always been my ambition to do one Unforgotten – and I don't know if I'll get to write it – which is just Dames; get Dame Judi, get Dame Eileen, Dame Helen... all of them. That might be series seven!"
Chris Lang's new ITV drama Dark Heart begins on Wednesday, October 31 at 9pm, with episode two following the next day (Thursday, November 1 at 9pm).
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