The Rap Sheet: Cast & Characters of Season 4
Two dynamic detectives against four mysterious murder suspects…can you keep it all straight? We’ve got your guide to the main players and suspects of Season 4, the actors that play them, and where you may have seen them before.
- 1.
Nicola Walker
The Character: Cassie Stuart
Role: Detective Chief Inspector (DCI)
This Season: Last season left the seasoned detective wanting out of the job, after a particularly horrific case left her rattled. But Cassie can’t leave for good just yet thanks to the rules surrounding her pension. “Having gone through what she went through in the last storyline… she knows that she is broken, that she should stop but also on a practical level, she literally cannot leave the police force without that settlement and why should she,” Walker said.
“Her problem has always been that she gets too personally involved, but how could you not get personally involved in the things she deals with,” Walker said. In her head she is imagining she is going to split her brain, she’s going to go back and just do her job, and she’s not going to get personally involved. That isn’t going to happen because of the sort of woman she is.”
Where You’ve Seen Her Before: In addition to solving cold cases in Unforgotten, Walker has appeared in TV series such as Last Tango in Halifax, Babylon and MI-5. She also appeared in the hit film Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994 for her very first on-screen role. Up next, Walker is slated to star in the TV detective series Annika.
- 2.
Sanjeev Bhaskar
The Character: Sunny Khan
Role: Detective Inspector (DI), sidekick to Cassie, backpack carrier
This Season: DI Sunny Khan is back on the case and continuing forward, with or without Cassie by his side. (But, of course, he prefers to have her by his side.) “What I like about Sunny is that he has always been Cassie’s rock; he is dependable both in terms of his work and his support of her,” Bhaskar said. “He understands the pressures of the job and is slightly better at compartmentalizing it than Cassie is. She takes it much more personally than Sunny and he is aware of that but he also knows that’s what makes her such a good detective, that it is personal to her.”
Fun Fact: When Bhaskar and the team noticed that there was some social media buzz about Sunny’s backpack and what could possibly be in it, Bhaskar decided to make a game of it. “I asked the costume department to fill the bag…I said, don’t tell me what’s in it and I will open it at the end of the day,” he said in one video. From there, he posts his findings on social media. Check out #sunnysbackpack!
Where You’ve Seen Him Before: Outside of his role as the backpack-loving DI, Bhaskar may be known for his roles in films such as Yesterday (also starring Downton Abbey star Lily James and Poldark star Ellise Chappell) or from TV series such as Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, The Kumars, and the hit children’s series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.
- 3.
Susan Lynch
The Character: Liz Baildon
Role: Murder Suspect, current Chief Constable, fiancé
This Season: “Liz is quite a challenging character, because initially you think she is one thing and then suddenly as time unfolds, you see that she is something entirely different and it is so brilliantly arced,” Lynch said. “She has a highly responsible job which she is exceptionally good at and she is very happily engaged to the love of her life, Janet (Amanda Douge). So she has found herself in such a happy place in her life and then suddenly, as this drama does, it unfurls each of the characters and you find out that Liz is not who she seems.”
Fun Fact: This may have been Lynch’s first time acting on Unforgotten, but it wasn’t her first time working with one member of the team. “Andy Wilson directed this series and he was the person who directed me in my first ever TV role, on a series called Cracker (1993). We hadn’t worked together since and I was about 23 then and I am 49 now so you do the math… When they sent all the information for the series over and I saw Andy’s name I was over the moon. Working with him, it felt like no time had passed. It was really exciting stepping on to set and even more so due to my history with Andy. Everyone was so welcoming.”
Where You’ve Seen Her Before: Before Unforgotten, White appeared in a number of TV series, including Happy Valley, Apple Tree Yard, and in the Downton Abbey film as Miss Lawton, the Queen’s royal dresser.
- 4.
Liz White
The Character: Fiona Grayson
Role: Murder Suspect, therapist
This Season: The four suspects in the case have a shared past, have since all dispersed, and have no remaining association with each other — but the question is “whodunit?” How long can Fiona avoid her past?
“She is a therapist and she and [her husband] Geoff (Daniel Flynn) are in the process of buying a property to be her new practice,” White said of her character. “So suddenly she finds herself in a situation where they are set to expand their business and she is about to become more prominent in her own right, and that terrifies her. Fiona is living this false reality, apart from the fact she has two children she loves and what seems to be a happy union with her partner. She has done a good job re-establishing herself, but the past is still hanging over her head.”
Fun Fact: Like her fellow suspect star Susan Lynch, White may have been new to the series, but not new to the entire team. “Sanjeev and I worked together about 14 years ago, we did a drama that he had written. It was really great to see him again, especially as our lives have changed so much since then and he is a lovely man. You never know when you are going to meet these special people again, chances are you will and it was a genuinely lovely reunion.”
Where You’ve Seen Her Before: White previously worked on series such as Call the Midwife, Grantchester (in a Season 2 episode), and Life on Mars, as well as in films such as The Woman in Black and Pride.
- 5.
Phaldut Sharma
The Character: Ram Sidhu
Role: Murder Suspect, current detective, soon-to-be father
This Season: “Ram is a very successful man and there is definitely something of an alpha male in him and sense of bravado in the way he carries himself – broad shoulders, chest out, elbows out – and coupled with that is a certain charm and charisma that he has,” Sharma said.
At the heart of Ram’s story is his background and the particular challenges he faces as an Asian man, and as a second-generation immigrant, just like Sharma. “In certain ways he grew up between a rock and a hard place and that plays out now in his life with regards to the fact he feels a great deal of old school way of thinking, institutional racism is still there for him and he is constantly rebelling and fighting against everyone and everything. It is what has given him his identity, a ‘them and us’ mentality that he has grown up with and it has ballooned into a monster.”
“One of the things I have found really refreshing about [the story] is the fact that we are addressing a certain history that hasn’t really been addressed before in this way and in terms of ethnic minority representation in the industry this has been a character who has been something different, that I have found really interesting to sink my teeth into and portray.”
Where You’ve Seen Him Before: Sharma has previously appeared in series such as EastEnders, MI-5, and Gavin & Stacey, and has worked on films such as Gravity and Children of Men.
- 6.
Andy Nyman
The Character: Dean Barton
Role: Murder Suspect, businessman
This Season: “[He] is a working class man who has self-educated, built up a business and is now affluent and enjoys all that goes with that, such as the nice house and the fancy car, but in a way that is not ostentatious,” Nyman said.
Dean is happily married and the proud father of two sons, one of whom has special needs. He spends a large amount of time with his family, and holds on tight to the happy family he’s created, so unlike the one he grew up with. And maybe that unhappy childhood is Dean’s main problem, said Nyman. “That is something Dean struggles with and he is certainly not, when it comes to emotions, a ‘modern’ man and like an awful lot of men he buries things deep down, hoping and pretending that it will stay down there and that it doesn’t impact on his life. He had done things in his youth that he is not proud of but he has since done everything in his life to redress that balance.”
Where You’ve Seen Him Before: Prior to his days as a murder suspect on Unforgotten, Nyman appeared in hit films such as Judy, Death at a Funeral, and even as a Jail Guard in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, as well as in TV series such as Peaky Blinders and Wanderlust.
