'Unforgotten's Season 5 Finale Leaves Us with "The Case of Joseph Bell"

What is justice? It's a question Unforgotten's first two seasons grappled with heavily, with Season 1 failing to stick the landing by trying to address too many cultural issues at once, while Season 2 focused on the reality that many times, justice isn't going to come from within the system. Season 5's finale feels like a combination of the two, with the system being manipulated by outside forces to achieve justice, but with a result that feels unsatisfying, partially because it is deeply muddied by the series trying to smash too many social ills into a single case.

Jess: You were just trying to improve your wiki page. We see you.

We pick up the final episode right where it left off last week with the show's patented Episode 5 second body twist, a fun development, even if it was shoehorned at the last minute. (With all the Sunny and Jess drama, everything about the cases has been running behind its usual schedule, from the victim reveal not coming until Episode 2 to the second body dumped on the doorstep at the end of Episode 5. Balcombe shrugs; the body is young, male, and dead from two bullets to the head. It's not not Joseph Bell. Jess frets they still haven't proven Tony at the scene of Precious' death, but she'd bet her sister's life on it, so that's enough to send Murray to keep him from taking off on his plane.