The 'Unforgotten' Season 6 Premiere Introduces "The Case of Gerard Cooper"

It's been two years since Unforgotten last graced PBS with Season 5; however, Masterpiece's super-popular mystery series has never been a show to stand on ceremony or provide a lot of table setting to get viewers up to speed. That might be because our leads, DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and DI Jessie James (Sinead Keenan), rarely sit down at tables for meals, since they're both workaholics married to their jobs. 

In fairness, Jess clearly wasn't all that into sitting down for an apology, "I had sex with your sister again" dinner with her husband Steve (Andrew Lancel), anyway. The call that Dr. Leanne Balcombe (Georgia Mackenzie) has turned up sections of a spine from a dismembered body in the Whitney Marsh was well timed.

Before we delve into this season's suspect roster, let's take a moment to examine the opening credits, which this season feature a shot of a whiteboard with "COVID" scrawled on it (complete with scare quotes). The pandemic upended filming for Season 4, which had already been written when production shut down. At the time, series creator Chris Lang chose not to rewrite the script to include the current crisis; Season 5 was already overstuffed with Keenan's arrival on top of the usual case structure, so there was no time to discuss such things. However, now that we're five years on, we're having a case that will include the fallout from a time period that technically never existed in the world of the show.

(All of that being said, I am sorry Sunny did not think to answer Jessie's question of how far one could chuck a dismembered arm by saying it depended on the air speed velocity of unladen swallows.)

As always, if it's Unforgotten, there are four suspects, and this season is no exception. Here's the rundown, in the order they are introduced:

Melinda Ricci (MyAnna Buring)

In County Cork, Ireland, Melinda is driving while on the phone. A TV personality, her segments, "Mel's Minute" and "Going for Woke," are part of the British Broadcaster's right-wing lineup. She's arguing with her producer about doing a piece on an underage girl groomed by ISIS who ran away to Syria and married a terrorist; she wants to be more sympathetic, but the network is not interested in having her argue that. Her drive takes her to the local spinal center, where her paralyzed fiancé, Patrick (Emmett Scanlan), is a resident patient. He's trying and failing to make progress, despite his determination to walk down the aisle, and his doctors tell Mel she needs to break through his denial.

Marty Baines (Maximilian Fairley) 

Over in the coastal area of Kent, Marty is heading down the pier to release a dozen roses into the ocean in memory of his father's birthday. Even without knowing much about him, it's pretty clear he's on the spectrum, and the moment he speaks, it's also evident he is at least partly deaf. (Actor Fairley is both hard-of-hearing and neurodiverse.) His mother, Dot (Michele Dotrice), is doing her best to keep him on track, but she's bedridden and there's no food; it's hard when he doesn't remember his mental health appointments and spends most of his time living online in toxic spaces filled with racist, bigoted incels.

Asif Syed (Elham Ehsas)

Afghan immigrant Asif is also driving, studying for the U.K. Citizenship test. It's not immediately clear whether he's aware that his brother, Hassan (Ahmad Sakhi), along with a few other men, has stowed away in a container on a cargo ship heading from Calais to Dover, the last leg in his escape from Kabul. However, when the group arrives at their drop-off in the woods, they make their way to the gas station rendezvous, and Hassan gets into Asif's waiting car. He's lucky; the rest are spotted as they get into a waiting van by a pair of local cops, and Asif hurries to get on the road before they're also noticed.

Professor Juliet Cooper (Victoria Hamilton) 

Finally, in Central London, Juliet is also losing an argument on the phone. Her daughter, Taylor (Pixie Davies), got into another fight, and despite Juliet's best efforts, will be suspended. When she arrives, Taylor says she flipped because the girl made a snide remark about her father's suicide. Unfortunately, Juliet has bigger problems; on her way out the door, her boss, Mark (Adrian Rawlins), informs her that there has been a complaint, and tells her she must return to meet with him later that afternoon. A (caucasian) student by the name of Liz has reported Cooper; she's upset the senior reading list is "too white." 

Liz already went to complain to Professor Cooper directly; unfortunately, the book by a British Black writer she thoughtlessly offered off-the-cuff featured heavy use of the n-word. Hilariously, the kid is not even complaining about that; she's upset Professor Cooper didn't warn her before she started reading it. Cooper rolls her eyes and says she has no problem with apologizing to the student and her overly ridiculous sensibilities. However, the Union is now involved and wants Cooper to take a "microaggressions" course. Considering that no microaggressions were committed (unless you count making some poor white girl read a book written by and for Black women), Cooper refuses.

While our suspects go about their day, unaware of the cold case that's about to blow their lives to smithereens, Sunny is trying to land himself a date. Unsurprisingly, it's not going so well. Neither, of course, is Jess's marriage; Steve fed her meal to the dog. Also, as usual, her mother, Kate (Kate Robbins), is not helping by trying to insist that this interfamily affair can just be shoved under the rug. However, Jess isn't helping matters either by keeping mum over the strands of long hair attached to Steve's wool coat, which were definitely not hers.

As always, Episode 1 focuses on narrowing down the time frame of when the crime occurred, which is helpfully assisted by Whitney Marsh having been drained once before, in 2009, and left to dry out for two years. Since the body parts would have been found then, had they been there, that puts the death sometime within the last decade. At least those in the muddy marsh are successful, as another body part, still intact inside garbage bags, is unearthed. Dr. Balcombe is pleased to have an entire leg relatively undecomposed to work with, but until they find a piece that shows how the victim died, she's only got that it was cut up post mortem.

Balcombe gets lucky; an inspection of the leg uncovers the fatal wound, a tiny slice on the inner thigh where someone went right through the victim's femoral artery, which would have caused a catastrophic bleed out. If you think that's an odd way to die, you'd be right; professional assassins usually use it, suggesting whoever the victim was, they were in a bad scene and involved with some nasty people. A whole leg does mean there's DNA to be extracted, and in this case, they actually find a match in the database despite there being no arms or head (or even the other leg). 

The victim was Gerard Cooper, and if his face isn't instantly recognizable from all the photos Juliet has around her house, office, and on her phone, the series cuts to her living room wall to ensure everyone makes the connection. 

Suddenly, Taylor's rage and her accusation that her mother isn't being honest about her father's disappearance fall into place, as is the demand that they do "family therapy" where her mother also faces what they've been through. Juliet never believed her husband had killed himself, and unfortunately, she's about to be proven terribly, terribly right. Hey, at least they've agreed to start therapy already, so they'll have a place to process all this, including whatever it was that Gary was up to that got him killed and his body disposed of in such a professional manner.

But there is one small catch. The officer who led the original investigation into Cooper's claim that her husband disappeared is now in jail, convicted of multiple corruption charges, which means that everything on file is suspect. But, far more importantly, Sunny may have to recuse himself; the investigator was former DI Ram Sidhu (Phaldut Sharma), one of the career cops from Cassie's final case, whom Sunny was instrumental in putting away back in Season 4.

Unforgotten loves a twist cliffhanger, but this one's bigger than most. The show has been on the air for a decade as a semi-anthology series, where four new big guest stars appear for exactly six episodes and then are never seen again. Bringing back Ram, a South Asian cop whose bitter corruption and cynical abuse of the system were positioned as a sort of "anti-Sunny," is quite the choice. 

Additionally, Season 4 marked the beginning of foregrounding the rest of the team, so everyone in the department has interacted with Ram... except Jessie. Next week's deep dive into the original case is going to be very interesting....

Unforgotten Season 6 continues with new episodes every Sunday at 10 p.m. ET on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. All six episodes are available for members as a binge drop via PBS Passport. As always, check your local listings. 

Unforgotten Seasons 1 through 5 are available to stream on PBS Passport for members.