It's definitely time for me to get back to radio and TV, for myself as well as those readers who have requested it. I have just finished four seasons of Unforgotten and the first season of White Lotus. I have stated my preference elsewhere for TV shows that are mostly the result of one or two creative people, to avoid the David Thomson question of who directed Ozark (there have been nine directors; Jason Bateman directed the most, 10): Mike White wrote and directed all six episodes of this year's White Lotus, Chris Lang wrote and Andy Wilson directed all 24 episodes of Unforgotten (2015-2021).
Unforgotten is a rigorous British police procedural, beautifully written, directed and cast. Cassie Stuart (played by Nicola Walker) and Sunny Khan (Sajeer Baskar) handle cases of recently discovered corpses that may have been murdered, most of them thirty years ago or more, one corpse per season of six episodes: a body buried in a concrete floor; a body dismembered, put in a suite case and thrown in a river; a school girl buried near a highway; a headless and handless body found in a discarded refrigerator. Each season is devoted to a meticulous inquiry into the dead person's life and death. Cassie and Sunny work closely together, with the help of a team that knows how to research the lives and histories of the suspects, about half a dozen per season. They quickly learn that everyone has their reasons, as Jean Renoir intelligently said, and some of the victims may indeed have deserved killing. Though the basic formula of each season is the same and focuses on London there are many different characters and many parts of the British Isles explored.
White Lotus takes place at an expensive resort on an isolated island, accessible only by boat, in Hawaii (it was filmed on Maui). The wealthy guests take their importance for granted, while the staff resents them and their condescension. The guests, well cast, include a family with a son and daughter and the daughter's friend, an older self-pitying woman who carries around her mother's ashes, a honeymooning couple where the mother of the groom shows up for a time. The staff includes the manager, the woman who runs the spa and various locals, including Kai, a native islander who Olivia's friend Paula helps to rob a family as payback for the resort theft of native land. The show works on many different levels, everyone being objects of satire and sympathy, as the tourists take their own privlege seriously while creator Mike White explores elements of age and race, colonialism and exploitation, all to an effective musical score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, influenced by indigenous songs and instruments.
