I just want it over. I shouldn't even be here.

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.  

#31 : Unforgotten

A dusty old survivor like this ITV detective show always runs the risk of becoming set in its ways. Not so with Unforgotten, which this year said goodbye to its star Nicola Walker. It’s bittersweet: she was perfect in this role, but now she’s freed up to become an Olivia Colman-style megastar.

This was a pandemic discovery for me - I'd heard it was good and so finally got round to taking the opportunity to watch the first season.  And was very pleased I did so - and then told Mrs Reed and waited for her to catch up because I thought it would be a good joint watch.  We then powered through the rest of it - and thoroughly enjoyed it all.

In a lot of ways it's your standard police procedural, but it runs over the course of six episodes rather than one and it does a great job of slowly introducing the characters without overly explaining what's going on.  And, well - it's just soooo much better than most other such things..

And that's mostly down to the excellent writing, featuring believable characters played by a strong cast - the core police team is pretty consistent across the four series, but it's Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar who you root for.  Mostly because you get to know a bit more about their families than the other characters - which might possibly be related to them being the best known actors in the thing, I guess.  Nicola is really good - you'd expect that of her but Sanjeev more than holds his own.  His ramble chat with Adam Buxton is lovely when he talks about auditioning for the role - him and Nicola were sitting opposite Tom Courtenay and Gemma Jones in a read-through and Nicola suggested to him they were in the presence of acting royalty.  To which Sanjeev responded "Yes, I am".

It's also very well shot - both in terms of the interior and exterior shots (drones have made the latter so much easier these days, haven't they?). So basically, if you're not aware of this and you like a story that's well plotted, told and acted, then get yourself on it - and don't start with this season.  No, really - DON'T.  For many, many reasons.  It's all just very good - and I don't really understand why ITV don't make it clearer how good it is.  I mean, it took me three seasons and a global pandemic to actually get round to watching the thing.  And props to The Guardian for including this in the list because it's not a cool choice, but it's so much more watchable than plenty we've seen so far.

#30 - Impressive, but too much of a stretch for me
#32 - Interesting, but slightly disappointing