Stop reading now if you’ve been watching Unforgotten on Netflix but haven’t finished the fourth series, with its bombshell. This show’s too good to ruin.
For anyone who has already seen the fifth season of the British cold-case drama, on ITV, who is that Irish actor playing Jessica James? James is the copper with the unenviable task of leading a detective unit of the Metropolitan Police, in London, after its brilliant and beloved DCI, Cassie Stewart (Nicola Walker), dies suddenly at the end of that fourth series, shocking her number two, Sunil Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and the team.
Chris Lang’s acclaimed crime drama is very well watched in Ireland whenever a new series arrives, so the nosiness was piqued when the new boss who blundered in after the DCI’s death, rubbing everyone up the wrong way, had an Irish accent.
The character is clearly Irish, though it passes unremarked in the script, maybe fittingly for a neighbouring state that is home for many Irish people.
Sinéad Keenan has had quite the path from middle-class Dublin, with “no showbiz in our background”, to becoming a fine actor with a strong career in British TV dramas, from the werewolf Nina in the BBC’s Being Human, to Showtrial, Three Families, Dr Who and Little Boy Blue, about the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in gang crossfire in Liverpool, for which she won the Royal Television Society’s award for best actor.
Those with long memories may recall her role in Fair City, the RTÉ soap opera, before she moved to Britain more than 20 years ago.
She’s chatting from her home of 12-plus years in Stratford-upon-Avon, in the English midlands, but Keenan grew up the eldest of three on Idrone Drive in Knocklyon, Dublin 16, moving later to Templeville Drive in Templeogue. Her parents, Frances and Peter, now live in Rathgar. Frances had moved from Belfast in 1973. School was “Colmcille’s, then Beaufort, then UCD”, studying sociology and history in the late 1990s.
Academically, “I was grand. School suited me. But that’s no big swing ... I mean, it’s just regurgitation, the way that system is.”
She considered law but chose arts, to bide her time. She loved her after-school youth-theatre group, but at UCD “I was always very intimidated by Dramsoc. The characters. I couldn’t penetrate it. I’m not naturally gregarious or outgoing. For want of a better phrase, there was an awful lot of, what I felt – it’s probably just my insecurities – were really creative, arty-farty people. I felt, oh Jesus, I can’t compete with that. I don’t have the language for it. I don’t have the references.”
Anything creative is hard. Living in a different country is hard. And I was very much a home bird. It got to the point where I was coming home nearly every second weekend. I was so homesick
— Sinéad Keenan
Proposing an acting career to her folks didn’t go down very well, she says, laughing. “As a parent, now I get it. Jesus, I understand. Eventually they came round to the idea of trying it for a year, which is sweet FA in any creative industry. But you have to finish your degree first. And I had a great time in UCD.”
Then, in the summer of her finals, she got a call from Fair City, long after a screen test with her drama group. “They needed someone really quickly, as a body swap for Farrah Phelan.” She was offered the role. “It was manna from heaven. Unheard of and completely lucky. Because of that my parents went, ‘Oh, maybe it’s okay.‘”
By her early 20s lots of friends had moved to London – plus “the aul story: I had a break-up. I was in my room one day, crying my eyes out, and my dad said, ‘D’ya think would you maybe consider going to London for a while and try something new?‘
“They’ve been brilliant. My parents were so against it because they don’t come from that world. But once they got on board … Well, they had to get on board – all bloody three of us are in it now. When Dad realised this is it, you’d go into the bedroom and he’d have stacks of books. He’s a ferocious reader. He started reading more plays and just taking an interest.”
“All bloody three of us” includes her siblings, Rory and Gráinne. “A hat-trick of actors, God love them.” The seed was sown for Rory Keenan as a child when RTÉ came to their school, looking for a boy for a radio play with Spike Milligan. He went on to study theatre at Trinity College Dublin. Gráinne Keenan – “the last great hope” – studied international relations in St Andrews University in Scotland – and then went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Sinéad now has a thriving career and great roles, but those early days in London were hard. “Anything creative is hard. Living in a different country is hard. And I was very much a home bird. It got to the point where I was coming home nearly every second weekend. I was so homesick. My parents would be, ‘You’ve got to give it a chance.‘”
She did a season at the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the town where she now lives, in 2005 and “started going out with a fellah who’s now my husband”. Chris McGill, a television director, had grown up nearby and a few years later, when “I’d had enough of London, wanted something a little quieter”, they decided to give his hometown a go.
The east midlands is a good spot: handy for her travelling to location shoots, a reasonable commute to Elstree Studios, near London, for him, and easy for frequent flights home from Birmingham. They’ve football-mad boys aged nine and seven, and a complicated work calendar to ensure at least one of them is home with the boys – “who’s doing what, when. We can be like ships that pass in the night. We’ve each taken a work hit over the years for that. But, touch wood, it’s been so far so good.”
Keenan recalls watching the fourth series of Unforgotten, and the devastation when Walker’s character was killed off. “When I heard they were going again I was, ‘Woe betide the poor soul who attempts that.‘” So when her agent said she was one of three actors asked to read for the part of Jess James, “I said no. Thanks but no. Nicola Walker is – not just in Unforgotten – a brilliant actor. The character was so well loved. I thought, Jesus, anyone filling that space is going to be against the wind from the get-go.”
Her agent persuaded her to read the first script. Then Keenan asked for another. “It’s a whopping page-turner. I read them as a viewer would watch the show. The ups and downs and twists and turns are brilliant.” She liked how Lang wrote it so that “the audience is slightly one step ahead of the team and Sunny. The audience has more of an inkling about why she was so prickly initially.”
As if it wasn’t bad enough to be taking over as DCI of a team in mourning, and resenting the blow-in, on the morning she starts the big new job “this bomb explodes in her home life, which was very clever, I thought”.
The bomb is Jess’s husband, Steve, announcing he’s having an affair, then vanishing on a business trip. Nifty storytelling, starting her on the back foot. And a nuanced performance from Keenan.
Her sister Gráinne played Jess’s sister – who is, we later learn, the woman Steve is having the affair with. What fun to do with her sibling. “That was really good,” Keenan says, roaring with laughter. “Because, obviously, that would not happen in real life.” The sister figures in the new series, too, but Keenan won’t reveal how.
She recently finished shooting How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, a new Netflix series from Lisa McGee, the woman behind Derry Girls. It’s about three women going to the wake of an old schoolfriend. “It’s mad. Totally different. Diametrically opposed to Unforgotten, which is lovely for me. Different to Derry Girls, too.” (She played Aideen O’Shea, the stranger on a train in the third series.) “Still funny, but it’s a bit of a thriller-mystery-road-trip caper”; it’s set in Belfast, Donegal, Dublin, London and Malta.
Unforgotten is shot in different locations, depending on where the suspects in each cold case are based, plus in a studio in Slough, near Heathrow airport, for police-station scenes, so there’s lots of moving about and a complicated filming schedule. Series six is set in Kent, London, Devon and west Cork – although Wales had to double for Ireland. One suspect, an outspoken television commentator played by MyAnna Buring, is based in Ireland – though, ironically, Keenan’s character “has nothing to do with that section”.
No more than for Jess joining a close team that resents her, just as her life implodes, and making a bags of it initially, for Keenan playing her meant working with a well-established gang. “Going in on the set everyone has been working on for years, there was a certain amount of nerves, naturally.” But Bhaskar contacted her before a big meeting with the producers, and they had a great chat first. “It was a very kind gesture. And, on set, everyone could not have been nicer.”
![Keenan as DCI Jess James. '[Nicola Walker's] character was so well loved. I thought, Jesus, anyone filling that space is going to be against the wind from the get-go.' Photograph: Jonathan Ford/Mainstreet/ITV](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/IKPAMI4A45GGXDIR6HEVUUJWRA.JPG?auth=45460e9ea28e2b68f52e7704dcc894389571164f9ebbdc141ad43662791177e5&width=800&height=533)
When Keenan’s agent was initially persuading her to consider the part, “she said it’s supposed to be one of the loveliest jobs. Of course she’d say that. But it turns out she was right. It’s such a well-oiled machine. You get all the scripts before you start shooting. Which may sound mad, but that’s highly unusual. Every department then can be ahead of the game. It’s got the same team, a brilliant continuity. Andy Wilson has directed every episode. It has the same producers. Chris Lang has written every episode. And obviously Sanjeev and the team.”
When Jess took over, “it’s only right that they shouldn’t like her, and it was only right the audience shouldn’t either, because Sunny and the team were grieving. The audience was grieving. When you’re grieving you don’t want somebody to replace that person. You want that person back.
“And, to add insult to industry, Jessie’s crap. She’s not firing on all cylinders, and they’re going, ‘Why this one?’” By the end of that fifth series, “once Sunny and Jess have that cards-on-the-table heart-to-heart, they begin to get on better and work in a team. Then people begin to warm to her.”
As this new series begins, Jess’s personal set-up has yet to be resolved. “Steve is still in the house. We’re six months on, and I think she’s decided this is the lesser of two evils: ‘I’ll give it a go, work through the marriage.‘ Now, me personally, I’m going, what are ya doing? Get rid. But I suppose, if you’re not in that situation ... Nothing is black and white. There’s kids involved, there’s a house. It’s complicated. But, in terms of her work life, it’s going much better. Everyone’s getting along nicely. She actually is good at her job.”
The sixth series of Unforgotten starts on ITV on Sunday, February 9th. It will be on RTÉ later in the year, with the box set on RTÉ Player. Series one to four are on Netflix
