Warning: contains spoilers for Unforgotten series 3 episodes 1-5.
Unforgotten series three began, as does every series of Chris Lang’s hit ITV crime drama, with the discovery of a decades-buried body. Teenager Hayley Reid had gone missing from her small town on the eve of the millennium, and eighteen years later, her corpse was unearthed from beneath the central reservation of a London motorway.
Over the past five episodes, Unforgotten has chipped away at the facade of its four main suspects, a group of men who have been friends since their schooldays, whose families shared a holiday home in Hayley’s town at the time of her disappearance. Kindly artist Chris Lowe (James Fleet) was revealed to have lost his career and marriage when he was entangled in a child abuse scandal, falsely, we think, but there’s still time to learn more.
TV presenter and journalist James Hollis (Kevin McNally), whose own career fell apart following a string of accusations of sexual misconduct, had spent years covering for his wayward son Eliot, whom he suspected of having accidentally killed the missing girl while drunk driving as a teenager.
Serial fraduster Pete Carr (Neil Morrissey), who had broken into a church and stolen precious items on the night of Hayley’s disappearance, was murdered by a vigilante after his personal details were leaked following a police cock-up.
And in episode five, pillar-of-the-community GP, Dr Tim Finch (Alex Jennings), was exposed as a domestic abuser who was on record as driving back to Hayley’s town a day after having returned to London, presumably to move her body.
It seems then, as though DCI Stuart and DS Khan have the case sewn up. Dr Finch did it, and that’s that.
Not so fast. Speaking to Den Of Geek, Unforgotten writer-creator Chris Lang has warned viewers to expect “a lot of surprises,” from next Sunday’s finale.
Fans will see “a lot of things that I think they won’t be expecting, I hope. That’s what I want to do. I want to surprise them and I want to make them think.”
There are “at least three big twists, three big turning points that people will hopefully have found difficult to see coming,” promises Lang. “There’s a lot coming!”
Unforgotten series 3 concludes on Sunday the 19th of August at 9pm. Read our full interview with Chris Lang tomorrow.