Chris Lang makes crime dramas that ask us to care about the people caught up in an investigation. We value that ambition, but in Unforgotten the actors often make up for crowded storytelling and over-explained dialogue.
Fi1m perspective
In Unforgotten (2015), the people around an investigation are supposed to hold our attention before we know who is responsible. Chris Lang gives us several lives to consider, and not quite enough time to become interested in all of them. We find it a decent police drama, worth trying for Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar rather than for consistently assured storytelling. The cast often keeps us watching through passages the writing has not made persuasive. There is a worthwhile aim here: making us care about someone for reasons beyond their possible guilt.
He began screenwriting on The Bill in 1993, before creating his first original series, The Glass (2001). Unforgotten became his signature series, with cold cases giving him a way to bring long-concealed behaviour into the present. His later credits include co-creating Innocent (2018) and writing the true-story miniseries The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe (2022). The recurring interest in his crime dramas is how people respond when their secrets become known, and whether we can still feel compassion for them.
The better dialogue in Unforgotten leaves room for an actor to suggest a life outside the inquiry. Lang can let a conversation do more than pass along information, and those exchanges expose the stiffness elsewhere. We grew impatient with the passages that seemed determined to make sure we had understood every point. The same cast sounds much less strained when the writing allows the untidiness of ordinary speech.
The police inquiry supplies a useful structure for Lang’s interest in frailty, lies and compassion. We do not need every supporting character to become likeable; we do need enough time with them to understand why the programme has asked us to care. That is where the crowded writing costs him, despite the actors’ efforts to keep these people interesting. Try Unforgotten for Walker and Bhaskar, with patience for the writing between its more convincing exchanges.
Biography
Chris Lang is a British screenwriter, producer and actor. He was educated at Reigate Grammar School and trained at RADA, graduating in 1983. In his early career he worked as an actor in television series including Drop the Dead Donkey and Shadow of the Noose, before turning to writing in the mid-1990s.
Lang began his screenwriting career on The Bill, for which he wrote many episodes and received a Writers' Guild award. He has contributed to series including Casualty, Primeval, Hustle and The Tunnel. His original dramas include The Glass (2001) and Innocent (2018). He is best known as the creator and writer of the crime drama Unforgotten (2015–), which he has also executive produced.
