We’re back with Unforgotten and allow me to say; I know the major buzz is around what’s in Sunny’s backpack and I could not care less if it was dipped in peanut butter. I wanna know what’s in Sunny’s melon! Let’s also find out what’s going on with our tiny skeleton after the break in my recap of Unforgotten series 5 episode 5.2!
A quick recap of where we were, you can read the last recap here: Unforgotten S5:E5.1
We’re in a tense briefing with new DCI Jess James (Sinéad Keenan) and the whole team. She assigns various tasks to team members, but gets shirty when DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) goes off script and asks the team to freestyle a little. They’ve recovered a tiny female skeleton from the chimney of a home under renovation, he asks the team why she was placed there instead of removed? Jess is clearly not a fan of this type of woo-woo thinking outside the box shite, she ends it quickly while Sunny and I stare at her.
To be fair, Jess only just started this job, the same day she found out her husband is having an affair and she has some massive boots to fill.
Those of previous DCI Cassie Stuart (played to perfection by Nicola Walker).
Sunny sits at his desk and checks his boss’s work, as he suspects it was shoddy.
Personally, I think Jess lied because she’s kind of an arsehole.
We have four people we’re watching this series. I’ve got them broken into four groupings:
– Unexplained Vignette 1 (UV1) with Karol Wojski (Max Rinehart), a hard working and seemingly closeted bilingual man from Poland.
– Unexplained Vignette 2 (UV2) with mugger Jay Royce (Rhys Yates) and his actively addicted girlfriend Cheryl (Hebe Beardsall) .
– Unexplained Vignette 3 (UV3) has Lord Tony Hume (Ian McElhinney), his lovely wife Lady Emma Hume (Hayley Mills!!!!) and his innumerable ‘growths’.
– Unexplained Vignette 4 (UV4) is already bonkers with Ebele Falade (Martina Laird) struggling with addiction and reluctant business/love partner Dave Adams (Mark Frost).
Omigosh! I just re-watched back the Last Time On and now that the lighting is better, I can see that Karol from UV1 is with a woman, not a fella, he’s not closeted at all! My bad! I will zip back into the last recap but there’s no help for the audiocap boooo.
Lord Tony (UV3) sits in a swank location swilling expensive whiskey from a misshapen glass and complaining about Politicians These Days, his companion Medhi Hussein (Abhin Galeya) does everything but roll his eyes out loud. (But you can feel it) After all, the person Tony is complaining about is mostly quoting Tony of two decades ago, Tony has changed!
Has Tony?
Has he?
Has he changed or is he atoning?!
Tony’s doctor Dr. Rashid Ghulam (Nabil Elouahabi) calls with the request nobody wants to hear from their doctor: come in now. We’ve got your test results.
So last time was the first time we met new DCI Jess James and unfortunately she wasn’t exactly at her best. She’d found out an hour before starting this new job that her husband had been having an affair, then he immediately went on a work travel trip and she’s been losing her mind ever since. He won’t talk to her about it over the phone, he won’t explain anything and Jess is spinning.
She’s parenting their kiddos by herself while he’s gone, young Eliot James (River Archer. Isn’t that a fabulous name??) doesn’t understand any more than his mum does as to why his dad is suddenly away for an extended period. Plus he heard them fighting because he has EARS.
More divorce / marriage problems across town in UV1, where Karol gets the tiny and adorable offspring of his ladylove out the door just as their angry dad comes in with a fight. Karol’s girlfriend Elise (Claire Ganaye) is still working through her divorce with Serge (Louis Bernard) who has decided he now wants shared custody. This is directly related to Karol living with Elise.
The next day Sunny checks with Dr. Leanne Balcombe (Georgia MacKenzie); she’s been hard at work on our tiny skeleton and found cause of death: a bullet wound exiting out the back. That means lots of blood and maybe even a bullet!
Jess is just leaving for work when she spies her errant husband Steve James (Andrew Lancel) creeping up the sidewalk, he thought she would be gone already. She’s so angry that she’s literally spitting at him and I have to tell you, Jess who can’t hear me: he’s never going to tell you anything until you calm down.
They have a tense and difficult conversation; it’s not really about the infidelity because it never really is. He wasn’t feeling connected to her anymore, he saw her mum more than her for large amounts of their marriage. He felt as though they were more like flatmates. The affair meant nothing, she meant nothing, it’s over but now he thinks they need some time apart so he’ll be staying at his brother’s house for now.
Jess stands there looking as though a housefull of bricks just fell on her, but she’s still angry. You can see fear now, too.
Back at the nick, DS Murray Boulting (Jordan Long) is thwarted in researching the address records of our crime scene, why is it password protected?
DC Karen Willetts (Pippa Nixon) checks with neighbours about the homeless kids that were squatting in our crime scene / house back in 2016, Karen gets an intriguing and entirely useless lead: someone named Tricia (now dead) had an an (unnamed) relative give the squatters the bum’s rush all by himself.
Karol and Elise from UV1 discuss this new wrinkle, how will they handle this sure-to-be tooth and nail custody battle? She reminds him: it’s not really Karol’s business. But he will be funding the huge legal fight with his two jobs, so he’s got that going for him. Ah and she’s pregnant.
Some of the fight has gone out of Jess at work, she manages to listen to Sunny’s update without yelling at him then strides off to deal with her emotions as every person in the squad room watches her leave. She is headed for the office of her boss, perhaps to resign, but a small delay puts her back on even keel. For a moment.
**I had a similar experience in a small way a long time ago. I had been waiting for a very important job interview, finally getting the call and being booked in . The day of the interview, about half an hour before I had to leave, I found out my partner had been cheating. Somehow I made it out the door and flew through the best job interview of my life, to date, to collapse into nothing the moment I made it back to my car. It’s hard to be a human sometimes.
Thief Jay (UV2) commences a small crime spree across his part of England as I wonder how on earth my own phone hasn’t been snatched. Maybe because it’s seven years old. He trades his goods for more drugs for his addicted love. For the first time, we see a long thin scar running the length of the right side of his face.
Forensics starts carefully pulling apart our old death-y house.
DC Fran Lingely (Carolina Main) has dug up someone who had something stolen from them…was this the dress that was found on our tiny victim? We don’t know, but what’s interesting is that Sunny has been having everything running through him and not Jess.
This will be discovered the next day when Fran announces she’s got a link to the video.
Lord Tony (UV3) seems to be having more and more trouble moving around, so much pain but he still manages to enjoy his surprise birthday party full of friends and his lovely wife Emma.
His grandson Will (Archie Rowell) needs a talking to, but that will have to wait.
Sal (Michelle Bonnard) finally gets to tell Sunny her big news: she’s pregnant! Er. Um. Says Sunny with a fixed smile and two grown daughters in Uni. Are they, um, having a baby? Sunny is horrified, but better to be honest, right?
Is it
Jess drinks wine with her mum again, Kate (Kate Robbins) is supportive but a little more chatty this time. Jess was always very self-sufficient, someone that self-contained can be hard to connect with.
Oh. Well, Tony (UV3)’s chat with his 16-year-old grandson Will is much darker than expected. Will thinks this is a lads-together talk at first, but Grandpa Tony is not down with rape, which is what sex with an unconscious person is. Tony will wield his still-considerable power to have Will’s school suspension revoked but that’s his one pass. Do it again and he’ll have to go through school and life like everyone else, with their own money and stuff.
**I’m sure that sounded like a really awful and terrible fate to anyone who hasn’t been a victim of sexual assault.
Fran, Sunny and Jess review the footage of a thief who stole a bag with cards in it used to buy clothing found on our victim; our Lady of The Chimney now has a face! A blurry, pixelated one, I feel like Kelly in Insecure: ENHANCE!
Jess takes a moment to remind Sunny where key information should be directed, I love his Screw Me? No Screw You! response.
Oh we do have a clear picture now, thanks to some fantastic police work by the gang! Hallo Precious Falade!
Which means our other Falade, Ebele of UV4, is our suspect and not her man Dave, who has shown up with a horribly bruised face after Ebele hit him. He’ll give her one more chance.
Sunny leads the team briefing and sets the tasks for everyone, Fran wonders aloud after why Jess even bothers showing up.
Fran finds Precious’s mother, is that Ebele?! Ebele is busy getting some very good news, the investors she met with want to invest after all, for the whole amount. She attacked Dave for no reason.
I mean, not as though there’s a good reason to attack a person anyway, but maybe she could have waited for the I’m Sorry call before absolutely losing her shite.
I can’t be the only one worried about what this extra pressure will do to Ebele’s fragile hold on her temperament.
Just then, Jess and Sunny roll up on Ebele with the news of her daughter’s body being found and leave as she’s screaming and coming apart with only Dave to keep her on the ground.
See, now I thought it was odd that they left, it was because Jess wanted to call her husband back, who had texted her something dire. And now won’t pick up. Sunny is incensed, they should never have left, it’s a murder investigation!
They go back in; Jess tells Sunny to let her lead the questioning and he does..in the beginning. Then he takes over because Jess really is crap at this right now.
A picture he shows Ebele brings about our first flashback of Unforgotten series 5!
Literally everyone lies about the flashbacks on Unforgotten, I think Sunny finds that as instructive as telling the truth. Jess gets mad at him after, he claps back about walking out and this is all in front of a watchful Ebele from inside her restaurant.
Tony has only 3 months to a year to live, perhaps he should just confess now.
Until next time! Cheers, you lot.
