This is it, our penultimate episode of Unforgotten series 5 and that means extra EXTRA flashbacks wooooo! Are you ready?? Our team is getting along, without further ado let’s roll into my recap of Unforgotten S5:E05 Jay / Joseph after the break.

To sum up: we’ve got one dead person and four suspects. Things are firming up around the decedent’s son, young Jay Royce / Joseph Bell (Rhys Yates) so I’ve discounted him entirely. Left in the picture are violent mum Ebele Falade (Martina Laird), wrong ‘un social worker Karol Wojski (Max Rinehart) with a big chip on his shoulder and former Tory leader Lord Tony Hume (Ian McElhinney), dying and suicidal at the same time.

Other than that, we’ve got a cult and a detecting team having the worst year ever. Our beloved DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) has a relationship on the brink and brand new DCI Jess James (Sinéad Keenan) is dealing with an unbelievably messy home life (her husband was shagging her SISTER – that’s just poor form and sheer laziness).

We open with DS Murray Boulting (Jordan Long) pulling up to the cult stronghold, basically a farmhouse with lots of eyes. I can’t wait to see the cult leader David Bell!! He must be in this somehow!

I’ll explain: the dead person is Precious Falade and in her short life she ran away and joined the Blessed Light cult when she was 15. The cult leader is David Bell and is apparently the father of Precious’ son Joseph/Jay and is a real bastard. It’s odd to have a new important character introduced at such a late stage in the show, so I’m guessing A) he’s not actually important but might have some information or B) we already know him.

We’re about to find out!

First we’re off to see Lord Tony and his wonderful wife Lady Emma Hume (Hayley Mills!!)  who would like her elderly and battered husband dying of cancer to slow down and smell roses. He tries to confess about all the wrongs he’s done that he’s trying to atone for but she doesn’t want to hear it.

I would, Emma!! I think everyone else would like that very much! Spill it, pal!

Tony can’t move on as easily as his wife can.

Niamh (Madeline Potter) takes Murray to David Bell, shittalking Precious as they walk. Murray’s not having any of that.

Atta boy, Mur.

She walks him to David Bell’s grave, there you go: A) he’s not important.

We see DCI Jess James for the first time, she’s at her brother-in-law’s place looking for her errant husband who was again: shagging her sister. Once BIL Nick (Dan Tetsell) hears that, he sends his brother packing, even as he protects him from Jess.

DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan gets home to his fiancee Sal (Michelle Bonnard) who is leaving him with the engagement ring on her finger she doesn’t think he ever meant to honour. Well no, he says he meant it at the time, it’s not that he was lost.

At the time.

Yikes.

Sunny has been feeling lost since his boss and friend and BEST DCI EVER Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) died in a nonsensical way, Sal almost thinks they could try to ride things out and make things work.

But.

She got pregnant and lost the baby, which told her how much she wanted to be a mother and how much Sunny did not want to have another child. So.

She’s going to stay with her mum for a bit and have a think.

Back to the case the next day! DS Fran Lingely (Carolina Main) and DC Karen Willetts (Pippa Nixon) are trying to find Joseph / Jay but he was sprung from jail by Lord Tony the night before so he’s in the wind.

Okay so they send a SWAT team to pick him up back at his apartment, he wasn’t in the wind so much as right there and handy.

The team brainstorms with the new information they’ve gleaned; word on the street is that Precious had a sugar daddy (TONY OF COURSE) and so does her son (ALSO TONY – I mean basically nobody else has any money) and that’s pretty much it. They think they can place Tony with Precious.

In Paris, we switch to Karol and his partner Elise (Claire Ganaye) who is embroiled in a difficult divorce made more complicated by Karol being considered a person of interest in a murder with a sexual component. She doesn’t even want the money from the goods he stole at work, she’s this close to kicking him out. And then she asks him to leave, but she’s crying so it’s better than kicking him out while not crying?

Last time we found out there was an allegation against Karol at work that he took pictures up a co-worker’s skirt, Fran’s been able to confirm that AND there was another similar allegation. Could something of a sexual transgression have happened against Precious?

One new thing: Jess and Sunny are working together! They go in together to interview Precious’s mum Ebele, who refuses to agree to literally anything that they have a tonne of paperwork proving. She called her daughter the day Precious died, whether she wants to admit it or not.

It’s Curious Cop playing off Curious Cop in this interview, with Jess asking Ebele if she physically assaulted her daughter and Sunny throwing out the FASD card, knowing how violently opposed Ebele is to that label.

Here’s the problem: I have a lot of sympathy for Ebele, sitting there with her solicitor not answering unanswerable questions, she looks small and frail. But she lies about never hitting her daughter and follows that with a denial of her murder.

That’s her pinned, just like her grandson, so I must also push her to the bottom of my suspect list.

Tony is still my best guess, but Karol is a wildcard as we learn massive amounts of surprising things every time he crosses our screen. I got no sex-offender vibe at all from him. It’s just that Tony is so obviously trying his best to atone, is he also too obvious?

DC Karen Willetts interviews Lord Tony’s colleague Medhi Hussein (Abhin Galeya) about Tony’s recent altruism, seems it started at the end of 2016, just after Precious’ death. Weird! Tony’s cancer dates back to 2014, that’s not where the change of heart came from.

Medhi thinks it was a woman.

I mean, technically Precious was a woman, and Medhi saw Tony and a small woman of colour fighting with him. So.

AND

Remember when Ebele walked into a stockbroker called Morgan Lavelle with a gun? Guess who used to work there?? Tony!

Was Tony Precious’s dad?

Karol’s old work emails are deleted. Weird! He’s back in the UK and Fran would like him to come to the police station please. Fanks!

Oy it’s tough to watch Ebele blow up the rest of her life. When we met her, she was in the process of securing an investor for making her thriving restaurant into a chain. Her life and business partner Dave Frost (Mark Adams) is still in the game but Ebele has no more facade.

Ebele struggles through a nightmarish explanation of her childhood to Dave wherein she was assaulted at 17 by her grandfather in an attempt to make her lose the baby, Precious. He force-fed her alcohol and I’m sorry, this is just too farfetched, Mr. Chris Lang, our writer and showrunner. I mean.

I mean.

That’s also the basis of her alcoholism?

COME ON CHRIS.

Sunny and Jess can put The Gun in Joseph / Jay’s hands, too right! They’ve got him in interview again and can put him in the room the night Precious died.

AND

what

He’s not Joseph!

That’s what’s so confusing about him being referred to as both Jay and Joseph, but it turns out that’s because he’s not actually Joseph, he’s for real Jay and Joseph’s half-brother.

THERE ARE TWO KIDS??

Precious’s second son’s birth was never registered and he lived with his dad mostly, a fella named Eric Royce who lived in a traveling community.

What the Sam Hill is a traveling community?

I’m trying not to be salty about this extra kiddo thing, it’s just that I’ve seen it pop up a bunch of times lately in books and I’m feeling a bit tired about it. It’s usually twins.

Also, Jay is 21 years old, not the 45 that he looks like.

When asked where Joseph is now, Jay sends his lawyer away and is Karol Joseph?

We don’t know! Jay’s not talking!

Some of Karol’s emails have been recovered, a couple of critical ones where Precious is blackmailing him for the upskirt photos.

On your work laptop, man?? Come on!

Oh look! Jay had a laptop in his stuff and it hasn’t been used since 2016!

Weird!

Also weird is Tony calling Jay’s lawyer for an update and insisting there was no other son. That call is interrupted by the Morgan Lavelle bank calling to tell Tony they had to squeal to to the coppers about the trust he set up.

Someone calls the station and reports that Joseph Bell has been buried in a garden somewhere.

Jess wonders about more bullets at the scene, did they keep looking?

So the laptop is Precious’s but it’s full of upskirt and creepy photos of women that she emailed to herself from Karol’s computer.

Police search for Joseph’s body in a garden as Tony makes a run for it via Gatwick airport. Jay makes bail again with Tony’s lawyer and everything is happening at once!!!

Karen meets with the security guard from Morgan Lavelle, he had a weird story but they couldn’t find him until now. He started out calling the police when Ebele wandered in with a gun in her ‘dare’ holdup attempt but then said it was all a joke. Because Lord Tony’s dad was on the board of directors and suggested he ought to.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Tony is Ebele’s DAD.

What.

What.

They find Joseph and we’re out.

Wow. This is so messy, so messy and picking up speed and I’m telling you: Ebele couldn’t tell the truth if she was up to her ankles on a month of Sundays covered in cheese.

Until next time!!! This is very exciting, if only slightly ludicrous.

I miss Cassie.