'Unforgotten' Season 6 Features the Return of the Ram

As we begin the second installment of this season's Unforgotten, it's worth remembering that this series creates characters with troubled, ugly pasts. It's supposed to help the audience maintain a distance, making it easier to accept when a case from 20 or 40 years ago upends lives. Even in Season 5, when the case was still relatively recent, everyone connected to it underwent significant life changes, and some had become better people as a result. The show's main problems usually stem from seasons where this fails to be effective, when the punishment seems disproportionate, or when it doesn't feel like justice. 

Season 6 is taking a different approach; these characters are terrible people now, today, not half a lifetime ago. Asif is sympathetic, a struggling Afghan immigrant trying to help his cousin (sorry, not brother), Hassan, resettle in a functional country. However, the reality is that he's forcing a traumatized, intelligent, skilled young man to pick fruit in an abusive system, and the kid is trapped because he's there illegally. Marty is a horror show, a young man radicalized by the manosphere who beats his mother and keeps her co-dependent on him. As for Melinda... well, when you ask your priest out for a drink because going to his house is a bad idea, God's not going to follow. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Likewise, Juliet Cooper isn't wrong for not caving in to a union that wants to throw her under the bus, but she's not making the best life choices either. The second episode is where Unforgotten digs into the original case files and brings in the rest of the team; Fran, Kaz, and Murray are given their marching orders to dig up paperwork while Jess and Sunny visit the surviving family to tell them their loved one's body has been found. Let's dive into what we learn about Gerry's disappearance in 2021.

For all that Juliet isn't exactly a nice person, Victoria Hamilton makes her deeply sympathetic when Jess and Sunny come to call. Not only does she sob over the validation of having been right this whole time that her husband was murdered, but she's up front with what led to his disappearance, and the family's money troubles. Apparently, neither spouse was good at life choices. Gerry took over his family's pub in Stepney a decade ago, and then expanded the business to include three other blocks of flats, which he let to the marginalized. Already a precarious balancing act, the pandemic shuttered the pub, bringing his business to its knees.

Juliet claims that Gerry's decision to get involved with "moneylenders" (whom she insists are "gangsters") to stave off financial ruin was made without her knowledge. When he was attacked outside their home one night, she called the police, only to be shocked when Gerry refused to help with the investigation. A huge row ensued, in which he admitted at that point that he owed £17,000. She believes one of those involved, an Albanian man who called himself Markaj, came to the pub looking for Gerry a few days later.

Unsurprisingly, DI Ram Sidhu, who led her case, never inspired her with confidence, blatantly assuming Gerry left for another woman until they realized his car was parked next to a bridge, providing a much more convenient explanation (if one ignored that said bridge was 100 yards from their home above the pub). When Sidhu was charged with corruption a few months later, she demanded the case be reopened and was ignored. However, Juliet does lie when asked why Taylor is home from school, an expensive public school*, as Jess notes. Life insurance sure did make all those financial problems disappear. Juliet again claims she only learned there was insurance after Gerry's death, which left them £400,000.

(*Reminder that the Brits call “going to private school” “attending public school” because they are difficult.)

The case file on Gerry's disappearance is remarkably thin, consisting of only 24 pages, two of which are blank to give the appearance of greater volume. Clearly, DI Sidhu did the absolute least on the case. However, Fran notes there's no record of Juliet ever asking for the case to be reopened, so perhaps her story isn't quite as accurate as it sounds. 

But we all came here for a showdown, DI Khan vs DI Sidhu, so while Jess goes to meet with Markaj (Nikolaos Brahimllari), a man who smoothly and charmingly claims to be "just a businessman" who happens to have multiple family members in jail, let's get down to what we all came here for: Phaldut Sharma and Sanjeev Bhaskar chowing down on some delicious scenery.

Markaj may claim that Gerry borrowed £12,000 (plus £5k interest) as a "friend," but Sidhu wasn't wrong in his assessment that Juliet's behavior is off; Sunny feels it, and Jess feels it. Moreover, they sense that something is off about her story now, when she has had years to mentally coach herself into believing what she's saying and refashion the past to her liking. In the days and weeks that initially followed, her story would have been shakier, her lies less polished. Moreover, there's a flat truth in Sidhu's assessment that her aggressive pushing of the gangster angle was suspicious, even if it's the kind of thing that only a corrupt cop would catch because game recognizes game: Dead men don't pay debts.

Sidhu believes the attack that preceded Gerry's disappearance was unrelated to the loan. The pub manager at the time said it was a past employee who was upset to discover he'd worked without pay because he didn't understand the word "furlough." (Marty already mentioned "Mr. Cooper" in his rant at Dr. Renfield, so this is most likely going to be him.) However, Markaj has a much better lead, asking Jess if Juliet had mentioned the other woman Gerry was sleeping with, the one who was always in the car when he made his repayments.

Gerry turning out to be a serial womanizer actually aligns with Juliet's story of how they met, even though (much like the rest of her story) she has polished off the rough edges when she tells it. But if you meet a man who "just got divorced" in 2009, marry him four months later and have his baby before the end of the year, that's less a whirlwind courtship and more a shotgun wedding.

The obvious answer for "the other woman" out of our four suspects is Melinda, because Asif probably doesn't fit the bill. The show then confirms that during a drunken phone call to her mother after another soul-crushing, super-right-wing nonsense "Mel's Minute," that she clearly, truly hates herself for doing. Her mum is all aflutter about seeing "that man you introduced us to," Gerry, being in the paper, all murdered in Whitney Marsh! You remember Whitney Marsh, don't you, dear? 

Melinda apparently knows the marsh well, well enough that she hangs up and immediately calls Juliet to leave a threatening message that if the cops come to her door, there will be hell to pay. Unfortunately, that call may be precisely what helps them track her down, once a few phone records are pulled. 

As for the Marsh, signs have been posted asking anyone to come forward, both there and in Marty's neighborhood, the latter of which is almost certainly still includes the same block of flats once owned by the Coopers. Meanwhile, Kaz has hit a jackpot, with multiple car thefts reported in the Whitney Marsh car park in February and March 2021, which means a motherlode of CCTV footage, some of which might even contain the night in question. 

Unforgotten's going to have a few suspects to chase down starting next week.

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.