If you are as hooked as I am on Unforgotten series 6, you will understand how closely these episode recaps are running together. We’re past the halfway mark, we’ve identified all suspects (wait, have we?), their motives (surely) and now we just need to watch Sunny and Jess close that door, ever so slowly so nobody sneaks out. Rolling into my Unforgotten series 6 episode 4 recap after the break!

**I never ever skip the opening, gorgeous music and visuals.

We open in the cafeteria,  debriefing with DCI Jess James (Sinéad Keenan) brainstorming with DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar!), DS Fran Lingely (Carolina Main), DS Murray Boulting (Jordan Long) and DC Karen Willetts (Pippa Nixon).

How did two such people who appear to be so far apart on the political spectrum as Juliet Cooper (Victoria Hamilton) and her deceased husband Gerry Cooper function together in a marriage? Gerry was a far-right conservative, against refugees and immigration and all the isms, Juliet appears to be a progressive liberal university professor. Strange bedfellows indeed; although…Gerry had been warming his bed with even-more-far-right Melinda Ricci (MyAnna Buring) and Juliet has been fighting with liberal college students lately, hmmm.

We haven’t seen a whole lot about Melinda yet, but apparently she’s well known in the public eye as Peachy Ricci; a bargain version of Katie Hopkins, who I think is a sort of UK version of Ann Coulter. We know Melinda has a partner with no insurance coverage gravely injured in a drunk driving incident, and that she occasionally sleeps with a dishy priest.

We left off last time with Jess and Sunny interviewing Marty Baines (Maximilian Fairley), a gentleman on the autism spectrum suspected of beating Gerry up shortly before his death. Marty brought his dad into the discussion, now Jess would like to know some more about this missing patriarch. Sunny notices Marty’s aggressive tone; why are these questions about Marty’s dad upsetting him? “Because he was dead. Because Gerry made him be dead.”

While I appreciate the naked animosity and anger vibrating off of Marty; I have a very hard time seeing him being organized enough to kill Gerry, dismember him carefully and then dispose of the parts. Beat him to yonkers in a back alley: absolutely.

However, if you want a really organized murderer, we’ve got Juliet. She’s been working on improving her relationship with her teenage daughter Taylor (Pixie Davies), who is suddenly wondering about her socialist mother’s choice of school. A posh conservative enclave does seem off-brand for your typical hippy dippy commie. (I am one, so I can use that language)

Back to Marty, who kept asking Gerry for his furlough money, and would receive anti-vax ranting instead. Marty didn’t get vaccinated, and just as we’re thinking that Gerry convinced Marty’s parents not to get the jab, Marty confesses that it was he who told them not to get it. But that was based on what Gerry told him, and when Marty’s dad died at the end of February from COVID, there was Marty with no dad and no furlough money. He attributed both of these things back to Gerry.

There is a moment for every suspect when the police roll up on them; it’s always slow-motion and pivotal to the unraveling of whatever sense of normalcy each person has managed to maintain. We see Melinda’s in Cork,  amiable local officer Joseph (Louis Dempsey) arranges for her to attend a Zoom the following day.

Jess and Sunny are off to see our final suspect; Asif Syed (Elham Ehsas) translated for one of Gerry’s asylum-seeking tenants and was involved in an altercation with Gerry, who was a total slumlord.

As we often see on Unforgotten, the victim was an absolute menace, I think that’s so we feel empathy for his suspected murderers.

So that moment I mentioned above about the police rolling up in slow motion has a much more intense reaction than normal for Asif, because he is in the middle of shepherding Hassan, an illegal refugee, through the process of settling in the UK, and there is a fella there displaying fake documents, like a passport and the like, for sale right then. Asif sends everyone scurrying out the back door while he waits for the detectives.

– I do love that they offer payment plans for the illegal documents, like Sezzle!

However upset suspects usually are is compounded here by Asif wondering if his boyfriend Sam (David Witts) sent them; Sam was not happy to see Asif’s pal rocked up in his kitchen.

Asif is first confused, then relieved, then confused again when he realises that Sunny and Jess are not A) sent by Sam or B) from immigration enforcement. Asif is fairly convincing in his denials of remembering Gerry Cooper, but Jess and Sunny aren’t buying it. They’ll be looking further into the case that ended up with police called and physical violence reported.

Sam arrives just as Sunny and Jess roll out and can I just say? The flashbacks are disappointing this series. I’ve got one flash of a Vicks VapoRub or similar and that’s IT!

Asif lies to Sam, who is happy to move on as long as Asif doesn’t do any more illegal stuff to support the settling of the man who literally saved Asif and Sam’s lives in Afghanistan.

Let’s just say that Asif meets that demand with one of his own: Hassan will not be going anywhere and if Sam doesn’t like that, he can call the police.

Marty takes his medication by the seaside, soothing himself with the chants of his constant incel companions, ‘Be ahead or be dead’ and what does that even MEAN?

So Jess is not just working a difficult case again, she’s also got problems at home still. She started with us, her first day of work two series ago, 30 minutes or so after finding out that her husband was cheating on her. It took a while to find out that it was Jess’s actual sister he was cheating with, and now it looks as though Jess’s husband is back at it. But this time not with her sister. So Jess calls her mum to come over for a chat, as one does, Kate (Kate Robbins), the issue is this: if someone can cheat on you with your sister, what else could they do?

That may sound dramatic, but with infidelity, it can feel as though you don’t even know the person you’ve shared your life. To think that someone could come home every day, kiss you absentmindedly on the forehead, little pat on the bum, and have spent all day at work feverishly sexting away about other people’s bathing suit parts. If not pawing at same.

Back at headquarters, we have more background on Marty. He went t university, which is lovely, but he developed a habit of breaking into other student’s rooms, less lovely. He would just sit there in the dark and wait for them to come home, the last incident ended with him proper strangling a fella; he had to be pulled off by several people. This only resulted in a caution, as the victim had acknowledged he had used ‘inappropriate language about disability’ and didn’t want that aired in court.

Background for Melinda now! She was in the Navy, and had to leave after an altercation with a Muslim officer, then onto owning her own beauty business, which was lost during the 2008 financial apocalypse. She lost her home, and when renting from as Asian landlord, posted an online (presumably racist) rant that got her a column with the Mail. And now here we are.

Where does the nun business fit in? Huh, she spent 6 months in a convent, so, sort of legit? She rolls up for her Zoom with Sunny and Jess. We get a short flash and I saw a handcuffed wrist!

Melinda is calm and collected, but doesn’t have quite all the answers covered. First she says she didn’t get romantic with Gerry, then she says she did, and she left before he disappeared, but she didn’t know he disappeared, a friend told her and what friend and how? She’ll get back to everyone.

Sunny continues: so why the move to Ireland? Just a change oh and she lies like a rug throughout, Jess and Sunny find it obvious and outright assume Gerry was violent with Melinda. I’m wondering how this will go down with the local cop chilling in the background.

Melinda races home after the interview to burn her appointment book from 2021, the one with Gerry’s name written on the day he disappeared.

Juliet gets home to find her daughter’s luggage in the middle of the stairs, Taylor’s school must have boarding, because Juliet is shocked. She’s even more shocked when Taylor asks her mum straight out if she killed Taylor’s dad; I find myself upset on her behalf, even though I’m not positive at all Juliet didn’t do it. Taylor heard her parents fighting that night, that’s why she’s conflicted. There was also this one other thing…

The police just that moment decide they want to talk to Taylor, maybe at school. The school she is no longer attending!

Meanwhile, Juliet deals with more fallout from her tussle with the student who out-liberal-ed her. Her boss Paul (Adrian Rawlins) swings by with an offer from the school Board: being fired disguised as early retirement.

Remember how Asif said he didn’t remember anything about the Dowari refugee family who he translated for and helped back in 2020? Everyone else remembers him helping them for months after his contract was over, in fact, right up to February 28, 2021. That’s four days after Gerry went missing, no way anyone’s going to take that as a coincidence.

– This estate agent talked about Asif bringing up problem people being ‘dealt with’ back home, that in combination with how assertive and steely he is being with Sam is supposed to make us think he killed Gerry, but I don’t buy it.

Shock of shocks, Melinda was lying about her relationship with Gerry and its duration. It started years before she acknowledged, and was full of blackmail threats at the end, from Gerry’s side. Right before he died, hm. Sunny pulls from all this that maybe Melinda and Juliet met, no idea how. But we know they did! Sunny will go have a chat with Juliet, because Jess’s got too much going on at home. Fair.

First, Sunny sees Leanne in the caf and goes to talk to her, not at work, Sunny! She brushes him off and this is crap. Absolute bollocks.NOBODY HURTS OUR SUNNY.

Fran has gone to get Marty’s DNA without his vulnerable person protector; I 10000% think that is both A problem and also problematic. I mean, his mum is there, so I guess there is that, but I don’t like how casual Fran is being. Marty is not what you would call stable. Now I’m worried for Fran’s safety.

Sam gets home and apologizes to Asif, he has been taking Asif for granted and not acknowledging everything he went through. He wants to help. However. There is a knock at the door and that reminds me that the place Hassan was working was raided today; he’s probably in custody. The knock at the door comes from members of the Immigration Enforcement Agency, they have a warrant to search Sam’s house.

Sam sits in detention, he’s taken all the blame for Hassan, and Asif is to be released. After he gives a swab to compare to the DNA evidence taken from Gerry’s assault, just like Marty’s swab presumably taken earlier.

Is Fran okay??

Jess calls Taylor’s school to see if she can speak with Taylor without her mum present; the headmaster thinks this is awfully suspicious and asks if Juliet has been arrested. Jess says: not YET and why would she do that??

Oh, by the way, Juliet is downstairs wanting to speak to Jess. It’s about the thing Taylor just told her, that she had come home to find an agitated Marty in their flat above the pub, looking to hurt her dad. 11-year-old Taylor was able to calm Marty down and convince him that hurting her dad would make her upset, so he left.

The problem is that Juliet is always pointing people away from her…

But Marty is on the run now, our red herring has beaten his mother brutally, locked out the care workers and left their flat. The police break down the door as he runs to his happy place, the beach.

We are out for this episode, cheers everyone. Quite a lot of upsetting things raised this episode and recap, I also hope you’re all okay.