With S4 on the way to PBS Masterpiece, ‘Unforgotten’ S5 is confirmed!


Sanjeev Bhaskar, Nicola Walker and rucksack in Unforgotten 4. Photo: ITV

Unforgotten, starring the always brilliant Nicola Walker (MI5, Last Tango in Halifax, Scott & Bailey) and the equally as brilliant Sanjeev Bhaskar (Goodness Gracious Me, Kumars at No. 42, Yesterday) in the lead roles as DCI Cassie Stuart and DS Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan, has become one of the mainstays of the PBS Masterpiece series line-up since its premiere in 2015.

With the fourth series coming to a conclusion earlier this week on ITV in the UK, there was speculation swirling the Internets that this would be it for the series. Word comes from ITV that the near cold case file of Unforgotten has been re-opened has been commissioned for another series to begin filming, hopefully, later this year. While there will be no series 4 spoilers here as it will not premiere as part of PBS’ Masterpiece series until later this year, you can certainly search the friendly confines of the Internets if you’d like but knowing what happens, I strongly suggest you don’t and wait for the premiere on PBS as part of the Masterpiece series.

Through the first three series on PBS in America and the four series transmitted in the UK on ITV, Unforgotten has continued to be both critically acclaimed and very well received from an audience standpoint since the beginning. Like many other series filmed out of the UK (i.e. Endeavour, Grantchester, Call the Midwife), filming of series 4 of Unforgotten was a bit of a challenge this past year due to UK production shutdowns due to COVID-19.

That’s about all we can say at the moment out of respect for our American readers that haven’t screened S4 as of yet. Very little is known about S5 other than we can be pretty certain that DS Sunny Khan’s rucksack is said to be returning! Yay!

The backpack stays with him,” declares Sanjeev Bhaskar. “You never saw Columbo without his raincoat. You never saw McCloud without his horse. You never saw Kojak with hair. These things are sort of keyed in to the DNA.” While the viral phenomenon doesn’t have it’s own Twitter account just yet (such as @L_MarysEyebrows and @AidansHair), it has become something of a star around the set of Unforgotten. At least it does have its own hashtag — #sunnysbackpack. 


In: Drama