Cassie and Sunny back to crack another case

Waiting for you favourite TV show to start a new run can be like waiting for Christmas - it comes round just once a year and is over in a flash. Sometimes it turns out to be a an anti-climax too.

Many people were gripped to their screens during the first run of Unforgiven - which took place way back in Autumn 2015 - so they’ll be thrilled to know it’s back for its second series this week (Thursday, ITV,

9pm). But will it be a disappointment?

Absolutely not - Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar will reprise their roles as DCI Cassie Stuart and DS Sunny Khan, who have another nail- biting case to solve courtesy of the drama’ s creator, Chris Lang.

Walker claims she was completely unaware of how well the first series did because she was appearing on Broadway in an acclaimed production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the time it was broadcast.

“The reaction totally passed me by,” she smiles, “apart from people stopping me in the street to say they really enjoyed the show. I was very pleased at how well it was received.”

The actress, who was recently seen as Gillian in a two-part festive edition of Last Tango in Halifax, claims she was daunted by the idea of playing Cassie again.

“The gap between series means it’s not as easy as you might think to walk straight back in just because you’re wearing the correct costume,” says Walker. “Also because I had got the impression people really liked the show, your adrenaline is up for the first few days.

“You hope we can serve it as well second time round. But actually three or four days in it felt really good to be back playing her.”

This time Cassie and Sunny are called in following the discovery of a body found in a sealed suitcase in the silt of the River Lea.

The corpse is well preserved, and turns out to be that of David Walker, a middle-aged man who disappeared in 1990, leaving behind a wife and young son, who is now in his early thirties. But who wanted him dead and why?

That’s what Cassie and Sunny have to find out, and their investigation leads them to four seemingly unconnected suspects, including a fellow member of the police force.

“These new characters are all in very different places with very different stories and backgrounds,” explains Walker. “But once the body of someone who went missing in 1990 is uncovered it throws them all into crisis. So they’re straight in from day one. There’s no gentle slide into the part. You’re straight in with this very heightened situation. The knock at the door they’ve been waiting 26 years for has come.”

Those of us who enjoyed that first series have been waiting far too long for the follow-up to come. Thankfully, it’s here at last and over the next few weeks, we’ll nodoubt be gripped to our screens once again as the final movements of David Walker are revealed ...