There's a new boss in town in Unforgotten

Cast your mind back to the first day in your job. Although you might have been excited about it, you were probably a little nervous too, right?

So spare a thought for DCI Jessica James. Not only is she taking on a new role with a new team, she’s taking the place of a much-loved colleague, someone whose death is still very much in the hearts and minds of those who worked with her.

The sudden demise of Cassie Stuart, played by the brilliant Nicola Walker, left many fans of the popular cold case crime drama in shock, but that’s nothing compared to how her right-hand man, DI Sunny Khan is feeling. It also left the show’s creator and writer, Chris Lang, with a headache – how to fill the huge gap Cassie/Nicola left behind.

“I’ve been left heartbroken enough times myself when a favourite TV character has died,” claims Lang. “We take these people into our homes and into our hearts, and when they leave us, it is genuinely sad.

“And so then it struck me, that that’s what I start with. Allowing our characters (Sunny and the team) to go on exactly the same journey as the audience, as they deal with the loss of a person they adored, whilst also trying to process the brutal inevitability of someone else stepping into those much-loved shoes.”

DCI James is the person who’s taking over the team, and Lang is thrilled that Sinead Keenan, whose CV also includes Being Human, Doctor Who, Little Boy Blue and My Left Nut, is playing her.

“If we’d searched every day for a year we wouldn’t have found a better actress, nor one who fitted in to the Unforgotten world more effortlessly,” says Lang. “But we didn’t have to search for a year, we didn’t have to search for a day, because as soon as I knew the team needed a new DCI, I also knew it had to be Sinéad, having watched her TV work in slack jawed wonder over the years.

“That was my hunch anyway. Having now completed production, I can confidently say it was the soundest hunch I ever had.”

Keenan adds of the character: “She was a fast-tracked cop, one of those who have a degree and can skip a few levels. She is very good at her job, very ambitious, and has a promotion. She’s got a husband, two children, perfect life.

“And then she starts this new job, and on the first day she gets some news on the way to work that completely blindsides her that has implications in terms of how she is at her job. So that’s simmering in the background.”

Hopefully Jess can keep going because she, Sunny and the rest of the team have a tough job ahead of them – it involves figuring out who a severed leg found in a bricked-up chimney belonged to, and who put it there.

Whatever happens, she should be able to stand on her own two feet, even as the pressure mounts.