We’ve reached the penultimate episode of Unforgotten series 6, we’ve got a red herring on the run and DNA swabs a-swabbing all over. Let’s cross some people off the suspect list, shall we? Rolling into my Unforgotten series 6 episode 5 recap after the break!

We open with DCI Jess James (Sinéad Keenan) all done with playing games with her philandering husband Steve (Andrew Lancel). She tells him she knows everything, she’s talked to her sister Debbie (Grainne Keenan – must be her ACTUAL sister!) and he better come clean tonight. She walks out, leaving him to chew on that all day.

Our victim this series is Gerard ‘Gerry’ Cooper, a pub-owner and slumlord prone to violence and right wing soapboxing.

DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar!) calls his friend and our pathologist Dr. Leanne Balcombe (Georgia Mackenzie), who has been acting weird since SHE kissed HIM after a casual night out. He is really hoping to maintain at least the friendship, but is 100% willing to go the full monty as well. She’s not answering his calls and acting weird in person. He leaves her yet another message, but he’s in Ireland for a couple of days, chasing down a ginger fascist ex-nun.

Said ginger fascist ex-nun Melinda Ricci (MyAnna Buring) is notified by local policeman Joseph (Louis Dempsey), she will come in for an interview, right? No issues? Melinda agrees, but she can see the net closing in around her.

She goes to the hospital first, stopping by the room of her fiancé Patrick (Emmett J Scanlan) to break up with him. She’s not who she’s been pretending to be; she doesn’t believe any of the hateful garbage she’s been spewing and it’s hollowing her out. She also did this one horrible thing.

What? What horrible thing? The screwing-the-local-priest-thing or the murder??

DNA results came back for an attack on Gerry just before he was presumably murdered, it’s not our violent young incel-radicalized mate Marty Baines (Maximilian Fairley), but rather our mild-mannered Afghani translator applying for UK citizenship, Asif Syed (Elham Ehsas). Jess orders him picked up.

Jess was also wanting to speak with Gerry’s daughter Taylor Cooper (Pixie Davies), but Taylor’s managed to get herself expelled from her posh school – kicking and punching a teacher will absolutely do it.

Marty went on the run after attacking his mum, I’m just relieved that DS Fran Lingely (Carolina Main) was able to get away – they had a bit of a scary brush when she went to get his DNA swab. I’m still not certain that will hold up in court, as he was not accompanied by an advocate and he is a vulnerable person.

DC Karen Willetts (Pippa Nixon) has been staring at footage from the carpark of the location where parts of Gerry’s dismembered corpse were found, but only one sketchy arrival has shown up at Whitney Marsh, a car with fake plates at 3:30 am the day BEFORE Gerry was reported missing. Interesting! Did his wife Juliet Cooper (Victoria Hamilton) lie about when she last saw him? Did someone leave a fake voicemail to throw confusion into the mix?

Back to young Marty, turns out he did not batter his mother, he just crushed up his prescribed barbiturates and put them in her hot cocoa to cause an overdose. She did survive, however, and he spent the night sleeping on a bench on the beach.  Oh Marty, you’re right, that was a stupid thing to do, but please don’t throw yourself off a cliff. A man walking his dog startles him into retreating, thank goodness.

Leanne finally calls Sunny back! He’s not there, of course, but she leaves a message: she’s got shite in her life, okay? And she would like to talk to him about it, and sorry for being weird.

Yay!

Now I am watching to see if they torture us with any plane crashes or the like…

Juliet Cooper (victim’s wife) is not just the wife of a deceased obnoxious far-right blowhard (or truth-teller, depending on the cut of your jib), she’s a distinguished university professor on the cusp of losing her job. I imagine that will be sped up somewhat, with the police circling Juliet as though she was already gone. Jess is interviewing Juliet for the eleventieth time, this time about the day before / morning of Gerry being reported missing. I think Jess is trying to catch Juliet in a verifiable lie.

Jess is definitely not the warm and cuddly interviewer like her predecessor, the inimitable DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker), or the genial but inexorable force that is Sunny interviewing a suspect, but her assertive manner sometimes bears fruit that would otherwise take ages to develop.

Jess pushes too hard, and when she mentions Taylor, all bets are off. Juliet throws her out and I’m guessing it will be very difficult to get near her again without a lawyer or arrest warrant present.

As Jess leaves, she gets a call from Fran: it is confirmed that Gerry Cooper used to hit his wife Juliet.

**Part of the problem is that Victoria Hamilton is almost **too** good an actress, she pulls off this helpful innocence so well!

Juliet’s immediately called into her boss’s office; Paul (Adrian Rawlins) is formerly suspending her for the Board, pending an external investigation. She throws a cup of hot coffee into his lap and storms out threatening to destroy everyone.

Jess and Sunny discuss the nature of domestic violence, which is called something else here across the pond…what is it…ahh! Intimate partner violence. Sunny made an offhand comment that he was surprised that Juliet was a survivor of same, he would have thought she wouldn’t have put up with that. As though there are people who willingly do put up with that. Jess sets him straight, so I don’t have to get rancid, but one thing I’ve heard that resonated with me the most clearly: survivors of intimate partner violence don’t always know they’re being abused. Instead, there is this situation where maybe they feel like they’re the only one who can understand the person they love going through a really rough time. The only one that can help. And so it goes.

You know what’s not going to help someone get through a rough time? Kicking them out of their church. Melinda’s been seeking sanctuary there almost all the time, but adorable priest Father Luke Ryan (Damien Molony) says she can no longer use their services. Seeing as he was recently schtupping our Melinda, that seems a bit rich that NOW he’s worried about people talking, but what kind of church representative would he be without displaying some type of hypocrisy?

I kid! I kid! Of course that’s kidding.

Melinda goes from being kicked out of the church while crying straight into an interview with Sunny while local cop Joseph sits in the back and judges. We know (okay, assume) all that gossip the priest was (now?) worried about came from him.

Sunny takes Melinda through her previous information, anything she’d like to alter? Add to? She comes clean about the duration of the affair, but Sunny’s line: ‘You’ve already told me a lot of things, and most of those are lies.’ has me Googling burn centres in the Cork area because that had to STING.

Melinda holds the line regarding saying Gerry did not hit her, and has no recollection of him blackmailing her for money with threats of violence directly before he disappeared. Then she stonewalls until Sunny asks for permission to search her storage locker back home, which she responds to with the first spark of energy we’ve seen from her.

She storms off and local Joseph pipes up: there is something Sunny needs to know about the good Melinda and Father Ryan.

Okay! The signs posted at Whitney Marsh have borne fruit! Remember that car with fake plates pulling in the night before Gerry’s disappearance at 3:30 am? There was another witness at that time, just as the police suspected. Susan (Morag Cross) saw the signs and explains in interview with DC Kaz (that’s what they call Karens, it’s the oddest thing, they’re not even Australian!) that her dad was coming home from his job at a service station and startled someone heaving body parts into the Marsh.

I’d say that would be startling!

Unfortunately, Susan’s dad has since had a stroke, so we don’t know if he will be able to identify anyone, but Kaz will give it a shot!

DS Fran rolls up on Melinda’s storage locker, does that mean they got a warrant already? That’s wicked fast.

The main event is Asif’s interview with Jess; he has a solicitor and will be referred to as Mr. Syed, if you don’t mind. Jess confronts him with the DNA evidence found on Gerry’s shirt the night he was attacked outside the pub, everything is No Comment but we get a little twitch when Jess brings up self-defense.

Asif’s slightly more forthcoming about the family he was translating for, I mean, he still lies, but at least he says something other than No Comment. He reverts back to it once he’s challenged on any evidence, but the net is drawing close.

DS Murray Boulting (Jordan Long) is on his way to the current address of the family Asif helped, what will they say?

Jess’s theory is that Asif attacked Gerry in self defense initially, then circled back 3 weeks later and attacked him again in self defense in response to something Gerry had done to this family of asylum seekers. Hmm. I don’t know what the family would say and it’s possible, but I just think Juliet is involved somehow. I think those are separate incidents.

Kaz interviews Susan’s dad Terry (Robert Goodman), he is lucid and verbal and remembers what he saw in the Whitney Marsh carpark the night before Gerry’s disappearance clearly. He does not, however, see enough to determine gender or even see a face (COVID mask). He refers to the person as a ‘him’, but that could be just his default. He has a diary, though! Let’s check that!

Marty has been wandering all over since leaving the beach, he ends up at the location of the old pub, which is now flats. He’s looking for Juliet, a passerby directs him away.

In the past 24 hours, Melinda has:

• broken up with her fiancé
• been kicked out of church
• been investigated for murder

And now you can add

• fired

To that list. Honestly, this is why people don’t come forward about things, they know their whole lives will implode and it always does. It’s just postponing the inevitable, but maybe it looks like a stay of grace when they make those decisions.

She asks if she’s being fired for humping the priest or being investigated by the police, her boss Gabriel (Oliver Lansley) tells her it’s dealer’s choice. Either way, I think it’s a bit wild that a show dedicated to saying the most vile things possible has a ‘moral turpitude’ clause for dismissal.

Remember back in the morning when we started in Jess’s kitchen with her confronting her husband about the cheating he did in the past with her sister? I think there is also current shenanigans going on, and sounds like he’s finally ready to talk about it.

We’re all ears, Steve!

There have been several women that he had affairs with, and he’s been talking with an online therapist, who has diagnosed him with sex addiction, much to the mirth of Jess. ‘You awful f***ng cliché!’

He is telling her all this so they can start over with a clean slate. Jess has heard all she needs to, this is not a case of someone not having their needs met and stepping out in a moment of weakness, this is someone who has done none of the work required to address the root of their addiction and instead is using that as a shield, a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Jess thanks him for making this so easy for her, she takes off her wedding ring and drops it in his pint, they’re done ‘for good, forever.’

I’m feeling conflicted! I would really like to cheer for her and You Go Girl this, but she did ask him to be completely honest, and he was, and then she dunked on him like Jordan at the buzzer.

Maybe there was a part of her that was hoping he would confirm it was just Debbie, and she didn’t say she was for sure giving him a chance, just that if he wanted the slightest glimmer of a chance, he had better be honest about what he was up to. And then she couldn’t take his ridiculous answer, and it is ridiculous, and off she went.

The natures of addiction and infidelity are not uncomplicated. Suffice to say that one does not excuse the other.

Nor is violence, as we check in on Juliet Cooper and her daughter Taylor (Pixie Davies), who clearly has inherited someone’s terrible temper. Is it Juliet’s fury or Taylor’s dad Gerry’s anger that drove her to attack people again? Either way, Juliet has asked Taylor to stick closely to what she has suggested, when Taylor is interviewed by the police. When Taylor clarifies that she means lying for her, Juliet downplays it: just say you don’t remember.

Sunny gently threatens dishy Father Ryan – good friends tell each other things, don’t they? Yes, they do. They tell each other things like that Melinda had a baby with Gerry, THERE IS A BABY?? WHERE IS THE BABY??

Asif starts to lose it in his cell.

So before Juliet got fired for pouring hot coffee on her boss’s loins, she was in hot water of her own for fighting with students. Students she felt were only virtue signaling, and in the last confrontation with them, she lost her temper and went off on one in particular: Liz Jones (Ezra England).

Now, after all this, Juliet seeks out Liz in the cafeteria to apologize and it’s actually quite lovely. Our one moment of hope in this show, aside from Leanne and Sunny possibly canoodling later. Liz takes Juliet’s apology and points out that it’s tough for the students as well, with job uncertainty and the rising cost of education. They just want to be heard.

Blood is found in Melinda’s storage locker, it belongs to our victim. Sunny stays in Cork just in case Melinda makes a run for it, which she immediately does. Sunny and Joseph roll up on her just as she’s getting into her car.

Marty makes his way to Juliet’s home during the day but is scared away by a neighbour, returning after dark to pick the locks and with that, we’re out.

Well. Usually we get the guilty party in the 5th episode of Unforgotten, but I’m not going to complain, as they’ve kept us on the edge of our seats without stop. Onto the finale without delay! Cheers!