Poor Cassie, gone... but never forgotten
IDON’T know either. Why did they kill off Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten (ITV, Monday)? Writer Chris Lang and ITV have announced there’s going to be another series, the fifth, but with a new partner for Sunny (Sanjeev Bhaskar). But we liked it just as it was, thank you. Did Nicola Walker get fed up? It’s nice, steady work. Did ITV try a pay rise – even an increased police pension?
Her character Cassie was merely working her way up to her pension age for a few weeks, so there was no need to find a stolen Range Rover to slam into her car while she fumbled with her mobile phone. There just wasn’t, was there? That said, as soon as any character starts driving a car, I prepare myself for the sound of crunching metal.
Then just to make sure that the audience was completely wracked with emotion we not only saw our favourite character declared braindead in front of her family; we watched her dementiastricken father flee from the news and listen to Cassie’s voice messages; we saw her sleuthing partner Sunny turning up optimistically to tell her the good news about case, then we later sobbed over his funeral speech. Finally, we saw him put flowers at her freshly-dug grave.
Why did we have to see the headstone? Enough! She’s gone; she’s very dead, and we now know she’s not coming back.
Why couldn’t we have had a simple announcement over the end credits: “Nicola Walker isn’t returning in her triumphant role as Cassie Stuart. We know you won’t like it but there you go. Just watch more repeats of the increasingly silly Midsomer Murders (ITV, Sunday).
The last time the nation suffered such a trauma from an ITV drama was watching Helen Baxendale’s Rachel get speared by a nasty lorry in a spectacular accident in Cold Feet. The moral of the story: never get too close to a character. You will be let down sooner or later.
What of the murder case in Unforgotten? Well, we gave up caring. So they killed some guy involved in a north London turf war with a fountain pen, then stuffed his body in the boot and dismembered it to fit in a freezer or two. OK, that was pretty bad behaviour for several of Her Majesty’s new police recruits.
Searing performances too from Susan Lynch as the fallen police boss, Liz White as a disgraced and tragic therapist, and Phaldut Sharma as the touchy detective Ram Sidhu. Top writer Chris Lang, against our better judgment, made us feel sorry for them all. How annoying. But I can’t wait for the next series.
Extraordinary scenes
SO BBC Three is resurrected and BBC Four is sunk. Favour the younger over the older. Ageist BBC should know better. This is the result of cost-cutting under a plan they agreed with the Government. Don’t blame Downing
Street. BBC Four was everything Auntie should be – distinctive, different, informative. Now they turn it over to repeats. What about iplayer? What’s it for? Why not a BBC One + 1 which would actually be useful to many viewers without the internet? The Corporation is so
wrong-headed over this.
A goat herder would run it better right now, and
more inventively.
in Line Of Duty (BBC One, Sunday). Real-life and long-dead paedophile Jimmy Savile turned up for a second time in a BBC crime drama. Is he “H”? Writer Jed Mercurio is really trying to get the BBC in trouble in this drama. In the last episode, an intellectually disabled character was described as a “local oddball”. He appears to have been forgiven for that. Who’s going to turn up in the next episode? Jeffrey Epstein running the OCG? The real and the fictional don’t mix. I don’t know why, but they’re simply incompatible. It wouldn’t be credible for
DUTY CALLS:
Line Of Duty’s Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) to turn up in a serious documentary such as 24 Hours In Police Custody – even if, for entertainment purposes, he did say, “I’m only interested in bent coppers!”
The story gathered momentum in the second episode and the 700,000 viewers who turned off after week one missed a blinder. Get back on board. Things are getting messy and AC-12 has a tricky foe to contend with this time. By the way, does anyone know how many free minutes you get on a burner phone? Asking for a friend.
Finally, two things: the BBC is taking its own recycling advice in Save And Remade (BBC Two, Monday), by upcycling The Repair Shop. If you can’t think of a completely new show, TV bosses, get a job doing something useful. And The Syndicate (BBC One, Wednesday) was back with more winners – and it was a hoot. Warm and witty, Gaynor Faye and Neil Morrissey – whose character Frank was obviously enjoying the glowing effects of a colouring shampoo – led an excellent cast.
In the plot, dodgy shop owner Frank took himself off to Monaco after stealing, certainly borrowing, a winning ticket for £27million. The syndicate this time is a group of young workers from a Pooch Perfect-style doggy daycare centre.
The lottery company, Mercury Millions, could do with tightening its procedures a tad but will Frank’s bid for freedom and riches be successful? What we do know is what bubbly Keeley wants to do first. “I’d buy a big frigging telly!”
She knows how to live.