'Unforgotten' Season 1, Episode 3 Recap: Tragic Endings

The first mystery of Unforgotten wraps up when a second body from the 70s turns up and Jimmy Sullivan's killer revealed.

Philip Cross: You knew who I was when you married me. In fact, you liked it.

This week's double episode gives us all the answers, even to questions we didn't know we had. But first, a second body leads a false arrest in the first half of the episode. Knowing these are actually the two final episodes that have been combined together when the arrest and charges happened in what was originally episode five of six, the answer is clearly that our arrestee didn't do it.

It's not super obvious at first though. We know from the end of last week's episode there's now a second body. All four of our suspects get a knock on their doors. But the knock on Elizabeth's door is Curtis, and her house is empty. She's gone off in despair, drinking and living with the homeless people under London bridges. Her husband, Ray, is desperately searching for her. Father Rob's knock is Sheila. She's seen the CCTV and knows he stole the money. She's tossing him out on his ear (as is right and proper.) Sir Philip Cross is visited by the Turkish thugs he's hired through his son to set Fennick to rights. That leaves mousey, wheelchair-bound Eric Slater as the one who's gotten a visit from the cops.

In short order, the second body is discovered to be in his backyard, which his wife in her more lucid moments recalls seeing someone bury back in 1978. (Her older son, Les, is the one who called and reported it.) Her dementia means we don't actually know it was him, but who else could it be? Like the man Slater beat up in '74, he too was a gay man, and when Jimmy turns out to have worked as a male prostitute to make ends meet, DCI Stuart happily jumps to conclusions and puts him under arrest, with fifty minutes still to go.

Slater is clearly a red herring. So who of those left did it?

Josh Cross: He's paid for a man to be murdered. Our father! It's not ever going to be okay.

Elizabeth jumps off a bridge, so that takes her out of the running, and well as seemingly ruining any chance for redemption for the little makeshift family. Heartbreaking, since she was the only character I was attached to. Thankfully, it's a fake out. She jumped but someone jumped in and swam and rescued her out of the Thames, and she's survived. Miracles, every day in every way. Lizzie, Ray, and Curtis might just be okay.

Confronted by his embezzlement, Father Rob admits his secret. He is the one who got JoJo pregnant back at the hostel, not Jimmy. It was Father Rob's child Jimmy got the money to abort. (The memories of Jimmy beating up Father Rob suddenly make a whole lot more sense too. She was 15!) Father Rob was unaware of the loss of the money and the failure to abort until the child was nearly two years old. The mystery of why he's been embezzling and where the money went is solved, though his daughters and wife will probably never forgive him, especially once it comes out the other daughter Thea, got more of dad's attention and cash than his main family ever did. He's not even allowed to see his grandchild when his daughter gives birth, though he does walk his other daughter down the aisle. Thea even tries to make peace with the family that didn't know she existed. But with his mystery solved, it's pretty obvious he's out of the running too.

That leaves Sir Philip Cross, who used the Turkish thug to murder Fennick and keep him quiet. Now the Turks are in turn blackmailing him for $2 million to not spill the beans they just did that. I don't know which is worse, watching Cross dig himself in deeper when he didn't need to, or watching Cross' moron son realize in horror what his father hired these guys for in the first place. Obviously, it's going to be him, right?

​And then Slater reveals it was... Claire.

Wait, what?

Yup, if you had your money on the lady with Alzheimer's, congrats. Apparently, Slater was gay (no surprise there), but it wasn't him attacking gay men out of rage. It was Claire attacking them when she caught her husband with them, in fits of postpartum psychosis that wasn't properly treated, because it was the 70s, and mental health care didn't exist for women in those days. If there was ever an answer that would just be the saddest, and the least satisfying, this would be it. Slater spends the rest of his life in jail, in his wheelchair. Claire is put in a home, where her younger son Matty, takes over being the abuser to a dementia-addled woman. Even DCI Stuart admits this is really a sucky ending all around.

(Don't worry, Cross gets what's coming to him. His moron son turns him in, and he hangs himself in his cell. So all's well that end's well, I guess, even if it's not very satisfying.)

Next week, Unforgiven dives into its next mystery, as we speed through double episodes of last year's far better rated Season 2.