Unforgotten Season 4: Everything You Need to Know
Unforgotten Season 4 comes to MASTERPIECE on PBS with its most powerful and startling new episodes yet. Find out where we left off in this critically acclaimed cold case crime drama, what’s ahead in the new season, the Season 4 cast and more. Plus, learn where you can watch Season 4, and how to catch up on previous seasons.
For more on Unforgotten Season 4 and other mystery shows in the 2021 season—from the return of Grantchester and Baptiste to the brand-new Guilt—sign up for the MASTERPIECE newsletter and be the first to learn everything you need to know!
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Where We Left Off
The dramatic end of Season 3 saw Cassie facing a starkly different reality, and left viewers wondering what could possibly be next. “When we left Cassie at the end of Season 3, she’d felt it necessary to stop [working],” says Nicola Walker about her starring role as DCI Stuart. The investigation of a teenage girl gone missing outside London on New Year’s Eve twenty years earlier “took a huge emotional toll on her. …She definitely had what would be loosely termed ‘a breakdown’.”
On the home front, Cassie found solace in a new relationship, while also facing difficult times with a grown son who had moved back in and with her father’s early dementia. “The kind of work that Cassie and Sunny do had pretty much caught up with [her] emotionally,” says co-star Sanjeev Bhaskar, who plays DC Sunny Kahn. “She has kind of opted out of the [police] system for her own good, really. And we realized that Sunny is perhaps better at compartmentalizing his emotions about these cases than she is.”
Watch our Where We Left Off video for more as the Unforgotten stars reflect on Season 3 and their characters.
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What to Expect in Season 4
As before, the new season of Unforgotten will delve into the shocking and intricate fallout of a historic murder case. But there is much more than an ordinary police procedural at play. “At heart, [this isn’t] a detective show, or a thriller, or a whodunit, but just a show about people,” says series creator, writer and executive producer Chris Lang. “Flawed, ordinary people …who have, like all of us made mistakes. Most [coming] from a place of weakness and selfishness and damage rather than pure evil.”
We find Cassie Stuart has been on leave for a year and, in requesting a medical retirement, discovered she’s just months from qualifying for her full police pension. “It is awful,” says Walker. “She is in a complete trap, so she agrees to come back and access the full amount of her pension. Her dad is getting more and more ill and she’s looking at the fact that she will probably be financially responsible for [his] care. …Her entire career she has very dedicatedly given to the police force. She is angry and feels betrayed and that’s how she goes into the story.”
Sunny and his fellow police detectives still work the cold case unit, and we find them “investigating another strange appearance of body parts, as we’ve begun every series,” says Bhaskar. “What’s different about this season is that the investigation leads them much closer to home. …This time around there are elements within the story, which certainly were more emotionally challenging for me in a way they hadn’t been in previous seasons.”
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The Cast of Season 4
New cast members Clare Calbraith (Anna Sidhu) and Phaldut Sharma (Ram Sidhu). The warm chemistry between DCI Stuart and DI Kahn, Season 4 not only continues, but builds in suspenseful and dramatic ways. Veteran actors Nicola Walker (Last Tango in Halifax, The Split) and Sanjeev Bhaskar (Yesterday, Goodness Gracious Me) continue in their critically-acclaimed roles. Other returning cast include Peter Egan (Downton Abbey, After Life) as Cassie’s father Martin Hughes, Alastair MacKenzie (Wolf Hall, Monarch of the Glen) as current boyfriend and former DCI John Bentley, Jassa Ahluwalia (Peaky Blinders) in the role of young, jobless Adam Stuart, Michelle Bonnard (Stand Still) as Sunny’s sweetheart Sal, Carolina Main (Blood, Grantchester) as DC Fran Lingley, Lewis Reeves (I May Destroy You) as DC Jack Collier, and Jordan Long (Kingsman: The Secret Service) as DS Murray Boulting.
Unforgotten has boasted an array of stellar guest star performances over the years and Season 4 is no different. “One of the most exciting aspects of doing this drama is that each series presents a whole new and exciting story, as well as the new guest actors who come in,” says Bhaskar. “The caliber of the actors who come onto the show is always so strong, which makes it more challenging and scary for me because every time I see what they’re doing it makes me want to raise my game. It keeps you on your toes, which is brilliant.”
New to the cast this time are Liz White (Life on Mars) as therapist Fiona Grayson, Susan Lynch (Killing Eve, Doctor Who) playing ambitious career-woman Elizabeth Baildon, Sheila Hancock (Endeavour) in the role of Baildon’s unpleasant mother Eileen, Phaldut Sharma (Hanna, EastEnders) as expectant father Ram Sidhu, Clare Calbraith (Baptiste, Home Fires) as Ram’s pregnant wife, and Andy Nyman (Peaky Blinders, Ghost Stories) as family man Dean Barton.
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Where To Watch Season 4
You can binge-watch the entire season whenever you want on the free PBS Video app or with PBS Passport. Catch up on the first 3 seasons of Unforgotten with PBS Passport as well! (Unfamiliar with this added member benefit? Get details and sign up here.)
Check out the official teaser for Season 4 now!
