This is the last episode of series 4 of Unforgotten and if I’m honest, I maybe stretched this out a little bit because that’s all for right now. All good things come to those who wait, I am now ready, woooo! Rolling into my recap of Unforgotten S4:E1.6 after the break!
They can show us everything they like on Previously On, but we only want to know one thing: how is DCI Cassie Stuart (the incomparable Nicola Walker)? She’s just been in a horrific vehicle accident with someone ramming her car straight on.
We’ve got four suspects that were all driving at the time: a tearful DCC Liz Baildon (Susan Lynch), an amped up DCI Ram Sidhu (Phaldut Sharma), a crying Fiona Grayson (Liz White) and a determined Dean Barton/Quinn (Andy Nyman). I thought about it a lot this week and I can’t help but keep my money on Dean. He was very very unhappy to see his mum on his doorstep, that *may* have been something he blamed Cassie for, even though she may have done nowt.
In fact, I have a hard time not pegging him for the murder of Matthew Kieren Walsh, which is how we met all these suspects in the first place. All the anecdotal evidence suggests it was Ram who killed Matthew, but stabbing someone through the head with a gold-nibbed fountain pen…is that Ram’s style? He likes to mix it up physically but I could see cold-blooded Dean being the more organized and calm killer. Like Liz Baildon, if she did it.
I can’t wait any longer to find out if Cassie is okay (of course she’ll be okay! Unforgotten is Cassie!), onward!
Our suspects trickle home one at a time, of course it wasn’t Fiona, she had her husband Geoff Thomlinson (Daniel Flynn) in with her but we already knew she wasn’t the sort.
DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan (the lovely Sanjeev Bhaskar) rushes to the hospital where Cassie lies covered in blood on a backboard. That was shocking, fully gruesome and I’m starting to get tense watching them check her pupils. One leg looks very bad.
Sunny calls Cassie son Adam (Jassa Ahluwalia), telling him to come to the hospital as Cassie’s boyfriend John Bentley (Alastair MacKenzie races to the same place. Dr. Leanne Balcombe (Georgia MacKenzie) gets there first to reassure Sunny that Cassie didn’t deliberately drive into traffic.
SUNNY.
Honestly.
Liz gets home her fiancee Janet (Amanda Douge) with the past tragedy written all over her face and spills all those beans. So maybe she wouldn’t be a good tactical murderer after all.
Adam shows up at the hospital with his grandpa, Cassie’s dad Martin Hughes (Peter Egan) and his girlfriend Jenny (Janet Dibley). Cassie and her dad were on terrible terms, this would be a despicable way to leave things.
Cassie’s head slides smoothly into an MRI machine while I frantically try to figure out what all the grey and no colour means. It’s moving, that’s good, right??
Ram’s still thinking about himself, he explains his persecution complex to his wife Anna (Clare Calbraith!) while she tries not to call him batshit. I mean, he’s not wrong, the others will say Ram told them Mathew Walsh died accidentally, but I’m still not convinced he wielded the fountain pen of death.
He’s so tired of fighting.
If ever a man was in need of a hug.
They need to decide what to do about their baby-to-be. The fetus has tested positively for birth defects, she didn’t want to handle that, to deal with the challenges lying ahead. He wants her to be aware that he may not be there to help.
The last week she’s come around to a different way of thinking; she can’t wait to meet her son and already loves him.
Sunny asks his girlfriend Sal (Michelle Bonnar) to marry him in the hallway of the hospital, as though he’s asking her the weather or if she wants a cuppa. She would like that cuppa Sunny, sure.
I suppose a huge life event like that makes you realise how little time there is to waste.
John finally makes it to the hospital, he seems detached from everyone else’s devastation. He wakes up Adam with coffee and news, though, a nurse told him the operation went well.
(I love that it was a male nurse. I know loads of male nurses and female doctors and it’s lovely to see that represented.)
This is a VERY family-directed series, we’ve got Matthew Walsh’s son Jerome (James Craze) introducing himself for the first time to his uncle Clive (David Schofield).
Sunny goes back to work, he wants all the suspects checked out with regards to their whereabouts when Cassie was hit and run, then he wants every detective working their hardest to put away the killer of Mathew Walsh, just as Cassie would want.
(I suggest starting with Dean)
Speaking of Dean, DS Fran Lingely (Carolina Main) has been looking into the death of his brother Steve earlier in life; 100% Dean killed him. I don’t know why I have it in for him so hard, by all accounts he’s a lovely person. I just…don’t believe that for a second.
Anyway! The official report is that the Quinn family knew who killed Steve, but had no plans to tell the police. He was killed by Collingwood Road and another street.
I don’t know, is it because that’s where Dean liked to kill people? Apparently Steve was unlike the criminal syndicate he was born into, quiet and unassuming, as Dean would have us believe. (Okay, stopping).
DS Murray Boulting (Jordan Long) tells us about the financial shenanigans Dean and Ram have been up to; these guys are miserable at hiding stuff.
Martin sits by Cassie’s bedside and pretends everything is fine, everything’s going to be okay, he didn’t ignore her messages all day and he and Jenny are 100% on board!
Ram and Dean are picked up at work, Ram punching Murray as he’s arrested for murder. It’s Sunny alone interviewing Ram, who doesn’t seem to want to argue about how many times he lied and why. Just get to the point, Sunny!
Gone is the cocksure Ram in interview only a week or so ago, he waits, all quiet and yet bluster. He’s gone with the best choice in his position: blame the one dead guy who stored Matthew’s body in his freezer for 30 years.
My COVID-19 pandemic-steeped self really appreciates this shot of how big the table is between them. Much more than 6 feet: I love it.
DC Karen Willetts (Pippa Nixon) is hot on the trail of the fountain pen, apparently when they’re sturdy enough to stab someone with and have gold-tipped nibs: they’re traceable.
Sunny has Ram and Dean dead to rights on money and close enough to smuggling; this is enough to make Ram finally shut up and No Comment. Right until then, he thought he could talk his way out of anything. He still clings to the story that he found Matthew bleeding from the head and tried to help him but he also just said he never saw them at all so I don’t know.
HOWEVER. The giving CPR appeared as a flashback, so I think that means it really happened.
Finally, FINALLY, Dean is in interview with Sunny and Fran. Blah blah “I was sleeping” blah blah “I suppose they could have stuffed a body in the boot and I slept through it” blah blah.
It gets interesting when Sunny pulls out alllllll the evidence of Dean’s successful cocaine smuggling ring but Sunny tries too hard to lead Dean to put Ram way.
Dean clams up with a series of No Comments.
No offense, Sunny, because you’re an excellent investigator and interviewer, but I don’t see Cassie leading the interviewee down a path like that.
Back in the briefing room, Sunny swears again (sigh); he’s remembered what’s important about Collingdale Road or what have you. He puts it together that Matthew killed Steve Quinn (who was stabbed in the head), there’s a motive for Dean!
(I didn’t even need that, I just KNEW)
I’m just going to wave my hands over my head in one long victory lap, let me know if this gets annoying.
*Weeeeee are the champions, my frieeeennnnnnnndd*
He cries and confesses, I’m just waiting for the part where he confesses to hitting Cassie.
*Weeeeee are the champeeeeens, nooooo time for loooooosers*
Liz gave her mother’s carer Eugenia Castillo (Mina Andala) a solid 10 grand, woooo! She deserves it, Liz’s mother is a nightmare. She tearfully quits her job (the Top Job as it were, in policing), her boss says the last three weeks were her repatriations.
Everyone is arrested, but okay, I wasn’t right about Dean hitting Cassie. Apparently that was just some car thief in the wrong place and the wrong time. Fine.
When Ram is arrested for drug smuggling, he opens up about the murder. Remember how he has been at war his entire life? Maybe part of that is because his three friends immediately assumed he was the murderer, is that the chip he’s been trying to work off his shoulder these past thirty years?
Fiona’s husband has decided that no matter how horrified he is with all her lies and their complete lack of chemistry: he loves her still. Wheeee. She had far more chemistry with Liz, but Liz has an amazing fiancee and a bunch of time in jail ahead of her, so.
End of part one.
