Nothing quite hits the spot like a good murder. I’m a big fan of crime dramas, the type of show where a hard-boiled DCI slaps suspect photos up on a board and draws arrows connecting them, while an up-and-coming office-based DS finds a pivotal number plate on CCTV. En route to finding the baddie, someone will visit a dodgy lock-up, get bollocked by their superintendent for rule-breaking, and have an ill-advised liaison with a CSI working on another case which turns out to be linked. The crucial thing about this type of show, though, is that it makes admin sexy. Checking appointment diaries, cross-referencing hotel bookings, looking up school records – these mundane tasks are charged with danger and intrigue; you never know when someone is going to squint at a birth certificate and say ‘well, it looks like Roger Poulteney… had a twin.’ Fuck, yes, give me some of that.

So, craving a bit of procedural porn, we caught up with the latest series of Unforgotten, a superior example of the genre that aired on ITV in 2018 but just dropped on Netflix. I haven’t watched the first two series, but that didn’t matter, because I was right in there from the off. It’s a cold case drama, which always seems designed to make you feel more comfortable with the crime, cushioned from its horror by a few years of grass growing over the shallow grave. In this series, DCI Cassie Stewart and DI Sunny Khan investigate the discovery of a body found buried under the M1. Through an obligingly obscure surgical plate attached to the skeleton, they are able to identify her as a young girl who went missing in 2000.

Cassie is played by Nicola Walker, who is fabulous. There are no gimmicky traits, like having one leg or a penchant for light shoplifting. She’s nervy, stuttery, and, as the series goes on, increasingly lonely. Her son has flown the nest and her dad (Peter Egan) is gadding about with his new girlfriend, leaving her with nothing to focus on but work. And work is heavy, with this grim discovery under the motorway. It opens a can of worms that wriggle their way round Middenham, a quaint Hampshire town where everyone seems to have a secret. To further complicate things, you can’t pin all your suspicions on the famous one, because they’re all famous. You’ve got Neil Morrissey as a weasly salesman, James Fleet as a bipolar artist living in a campervan, Alex Jennings as a softly-spoken GP, Siobhan Redmond as his might-be-mad estranged wife. The ones who aren’t famous are good enough actors to make you think they could be capable of owning the screen at a critical denouement. I hadn’t a clue whodunnit, so had to rely on Cassie and Sunny to diligently unpick it all, with help from their plucky team of administrators. Suffice it to say, the perpetrator is unmasked through a speeding ticket, a teenage diary code, and a conference date cross-match. See? Sexy box-ticking!

The paperwork is fun, but what Unforgotten also does so well is precisely what it says on the tin. It brings bodies back to life again; these gone-but-not-forgotten victims fleshed out, given poignant last moments, flaws and complications. There is nothing cold about these cases, and that, in the end, is what drives Cassie away from it all – she can’t leave it in the office, can’t cope with the vivid blood-red reality of it. Her near breakdown in the final interrogation of the murderer is perfectly judged, mouth curling in revulsion as she struggles to maintain her composure.

Unforgotten is a world away from the traditional curl-up cosy murder show. It’s smart, thoughtful, moving, and well worth your scrutiny at a time when real lives are getting lost in statistics.

• Unforgotten, Series 3, 6 episodes (ITV 2018, Netflix 2020)