HBO has recently released some exciting updates on True Detective. The anthology crime drama has been renewed for a fifth season, with NightCountry showrunner IssaLópez returning to lead the project ahead of its expected 2027 release. Fans patiently await the next chapter after Season 4, led by Jodie Foster and Kali Reiss, marked the show’s strong return following a five-year gap. While it will be some time before fans can witness what True Detective has in store next, there is another crime drama series that should prove enough to satiate the thirst for a tightly-knit mystery with the familiar flavors True Detective is known for. With Unforgotten Season 7 currently in production as of this January, it’s the perfect time for True Detective fans to latch on to this proven crime drama series.
‘Unforgotten’ Will Remind Fans of ‘True Detective’ Right Away
The new season, written by ChrisLangand directed by AndyWilson, will feature a new cold case, with filming taking place across the UK, including London, Norfolk, and Halifax. Following in the footsteps of DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar), with Sinéad Keenan‘s DCI Jessie James replacing Walker in Season 5, the British crime dramaUnforgotten brings to the screen a similar treatment and dynamic of characters put forth by True Detective. The lead pair of investigators, Stuart and Khan, would evoke the familiar buddy-cop dynamic of Detective Rust (Matthew McConaughey) and Detective Marty (Woody Harrelson) from Season 1 of True Detective.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Just like Rust and Marty, Stuart and Khan are two detectives with opposing personalities who work together. While Stuart is more optimistic and idealistic in her approach, Khan prefers to lean on the more practical side of things. However, a strong sense of purpose drives Stuart’s decisions, and she’s well-supported by her partner, Khan. Just like in True Detective Season 1, the contrasting dynamic of the lead detectives on the case makes the pair a great team for cracking difficult cases.
‘Unforgotten’ Explores Different Types of Crime Cases
Particularly in the cases the show handles, Unforgotten stands out for picking up historical, cold cases that are specifically hard to crack due to the passage of time, sometimes decades. Evidence becomes hard to gather, and witnesses are sparser. When Stuart and Khan find witnesses, their fading memories of events in the past always cast a shadow of doubt on the truth or lies they speak. In Season 1, they end up finding the skeleton of a person who was initially thought to have been killed more than a century ago. With persistence, the investigators found out that the death had happened in 1976, bringing the case right to the detectives’ attention.
Another storytelling formula that is a staple of Unforgotten involves all the key characters and suspects associated with the mystery being revealed to the audience right at the beginning. These characters are introduced in a spread-out manner, with each character placed in the specific setting surrounding the character. With the investigation of the detectives progressing closer toward the truth in each episode, the specific connections of the characters to the mystery at hand and their links with the victim are revealed slowly.
In this way, unlike True Detective, the British crime drama prefers to lay out all the individual pieces of the puzzle first before putting together the final product. Clearly, the long-standing success of the show, which started in 2015, suggests that the formula adopted by the show is a successful one, even allowing the audience to present their own theories right from the start.
‘True Detective’ and ‘Unforgotten’ Are Crime Dramas Laced With Philosophical Themes
Rajeev Bhaskar and Sinead Keenan in ‘Unforgotten’Image via ITV
Similar to True Detective, the show also brings up various philosophical questions in its story and character interactions, allowing the series to rise beyond just a crime thriller. For example, early in Season 1, DCI Stuart engages in a conversation with her father when she questions whether a crime has become less of a wrong because time has passed and the victim’s near and dear may no longer be alive to remember it. This sentiment is what lies at the core of Unforgotten.The show takes a very sympathetic approach to the treatment of crime investigation, focusing more on the lives of the victims and their surviving family rather than the criminals and their motivations. Even in its title, Unforgotten suggests the need to remember those who may not have been retained in the memory of the system.
Another similar thread to True Detective lies in Unforgotten‘s decision to keep itself rooted in the socio-political climate of the setting it explores in each season. In the opening season back in 2015, Unforgotten deeply explores the racial discrimination prevalent in the U.K. in the 1970s and how it manifested in various forms in the lives of the people involved. In its latest season, the show chooses to discuss topics such as cancel culture and far-right journalism. In its DNA, True Detective has always been political, whether it be exploring the impact of religion in Season 1 or the socio-political conditions faced by Alaskan Natives in True Detective: Night Country (Season 4). Similarly, Unforgotten does not isolate itself from the reality of the times it explores. Thanks to the kind of cases portrayed in the show, Unforgotten finds plenty of opportunities to walk in both the past and the present.
It’s not against the law to watch these upcoming masterpieces!
With its storytelling elements and overall atmospheric treatment, Unforgottenwill definitely interest True Detective fans. Each season handles a different historical crime with the same team in the midst of it. Even when Sinéad Keenan’s DCI Jessie James replaced Nicola Walker’s DCI Cassie Stuart in Season 5, the show did not attempt to make a like-for-like replacement for the character. Instead, James often takes contrasting positions to those that would have been taken by Stuart, keeping the audience (especially long-term fans) interested despite such a big casting change. With its slow-burning drama and tightly packed seasons of six episodes each, Unforgotten has a very familiar, comforting quality to each of its seasons. At the same time, it maintains its freshness with engaging mysteries involving a large variety of characters from diverse backgrounds.
All seasons of Unforgotten are available to stream on PBS in the U.S.
