'Unforgotten' Season 6's Penultimate Episode Rounds Up the Unusual Suspects

As Unforgotten hits its penultimate episode, in which little happens other than gathering all our suspects in one place, Agatha Christie-style, several things have become clear about The Case of Gerald Cooper, starting with the most significant latest discovery: Everything we know about it is a lie. It begins with a brief scene between Jess and Kaz, discussing their review of the footage from Whitney Marsh's car park, which was taken in February and March 2021. Kaz cannot find a single second of footage of a car entering the lot in the middle of the night, at least, not if she starts looking from the point in time when he went missing. 

However, if she rewinds it back all of 24 hours before his disappearance supposedly occurred, there it is, a car pulling into the lot at 3:30 in the morning. If that's the case, and this car turns out to be related (which it probably will), that means the man was dead for a full day longer than Jess and Sunny realize, and it changes the time frame of, well, everything. Kaz's slow building of the evidence over the course of the hour, a witness coming in having seen the billboard, leads to an elderly pensioner who biked through the area on the way home from his night shift, and remembers the night in question, and even promises to have a diary with conclusive proof. 

But first, everyone is facing down a bad day, starting with Sunny still obsessing about Leanne instead of taking the Big Old Hint she dropped right in front of him that said, "Don't call me, I'll call you." In dualing relationship crises, Steve is faster on the uptake; however, Jess was also far more blunt, informing him she's talked to Debbie and he'd better start telling the truth right now, before she cuts him out of his sons' lives. (Jess's speech upon confirming just what a horrific weasel she's married, as he tries to plead "sex addiction," is the stuff divorce dreams are made of. Sinead Keenan is chefs kiss.)

They're not the only ones staring down relationships that are over. After local Garda Joe Kane all but tells Mel he knows she's guilty when he stops by her house to announce Sunny's arrival, she detours to the hospital and dumps poor Paddy without a look back, before heading to what she clearly assumes is her arrest. Back in London, Jess has already sent someone to pick up Marty Bains after Juliet's new evidence at the end of last week, and now she's fetching Asif Syed as well, as it was apparently his blood on Gerry's sweatshirt. 

Finally, there's Taylor, who, Jess discovers, returned to school, only to be expelled for violent behavior. Without the school to help act as a mediator and Juliet's absolute refusal to give consent for her daughter to be interviewed by the Met, Jess will need a social worker to get approval to talk to the kid, but that's just a delay tactic. Expelled means Taylor's been packed off to London, where she'll receive an invitation she cannot refuse to talk to Jess and Sunny.

(In a nice touch of symmetry, the scene directly following is where Juliet is sacked. She grabs her spineless boss' piping hot tea and tosses it directly into his lap; whereupon she, too, is summarily expelled. Apple didn't really fall all that far from the tree.)

Poor Asif gets short shrift this week, spending the entire episode either in interrogation or in a cell after being picked up at the end of last week and still stuck there at the end of this one. Though brutally painful, even Asif's string of "No Comments" is more honest in their tonal inflections than a single thing that comes out of Mel's mouth, either before or after being confronted by Sunny's evidence that she's lying through her teeth. Working for BNC trained her well to bullshit with a smile, but being told they've found her storage unit in London, where she stashed her old life in a rush to get out of town, is too much, and she hisses they'll have to obtain a warrant. Sunny sighs; like Juliet, this is merely a delay tactic.

Our lovely small town Garda Joe sits through Mel's second questioning as silently observant as the first. (I think we can say with confidence that Our Lovely Garda Joe is, in fact, the source for all this small-town gossip that's suddenly everywhere, enough to reach the ears of the BNC brass, who summarily fire her.) Once the interview is over and Mel has left the station, he leans forward and advises Sunny that he's talking to the wrong source of information. Everyone here knows everyone else's business, and our dear Father Ryan has been keeping her quite good company since her fiancé's equipment no longer functions.

The BNC brass aren't just "parting ways" with Mel due to "moral turpitude." Father Ryan tells her that she's going to need to find another place to get on her knees; this church (and his bed) no longer welcomes her. However, he obediently sits with Sunny, and it turns out the Garda (surprise surprise) is bang on about the priest knowing more than just what Mel looks like with her clothes off. Not only did she tell the good Father that she was in a long-term relationship with a married man before moving to Cork, but she also made the same mistake Juliet made so very long ago herself: She had his child. 

With that bombshell dropped, it is somewhat surprising that Fran's team doesn't seem to turn up any evidence of this child's birth in Mel's London storage locker. While we don't get a close-up of anything, it is notable that there isn't even the sort of leftovers that carrying a baby to term would produce in this very clearly, hastily packed space. (Considering that Melinda was, at one point before she met Gerry, a nun, and her catholic faith does seem to be a genuinely held moral code, I must assume she's given it up for adoption.) However, piled in the boxes, there's a jacket covered with bloodstains that match Cooper's DNA. Now we don't know if this blood is from the day he died or from some other violent incident in their relationship. But that is officially two suspects who have DNA ties to the case, and a reason to bring Mel to the cell next to Asif.

As for Marty, he's evaded the police, albeit unintentionally. With his mother, Dot, in intensive care after last week's overdose, he's left on a mission. He traces his way back to the old pub where the Coopers once lived, only to discover it is closed and the family has moved. But the friendly neighbor who recognizes him gives him the forwarding address; however, when he finally gets there, no one is home, since Taylor is still on her way back from school. (He'll be there waiting; his lock-picking skills are still on point.) Despite being sacked, Juliet hasn't yet left the university campus. She didn't want to go before finding her student, Liz, to apologize for the "how dare you suggest we need more Black authors in Classic Lit" incident. 

A strange "Gen X vs Gen Z" conversation ensues, where Juliet apologizes for being as old and stuck in the mud as the Baby Boomers once were regarded as being; they were never supposed to be so uncool. It's just that change is hard, yo. Liz responds by reminding everyone of how much it sucks that the world is literally going backwards right now, and they are being charged a lifetime of debt to live through it, in a vain hope of landing somewhere and trying to survive. 

(*Season 6 was written and filmed before either of the 2024 U.K./U.S elections, mind you, and aired in the U.K. in early spring of 2025. It's almost more creepy how even more relevant it is months later.)

This week's episode was full of weirdly didactic moments, though the Gen X vs Gen Z was definitely the strangest. That one felt awkward, like an airing of grievances for two generations, finding common ground in the fact that being the best version of yourself in 2025 is seriously difficult. However, it wasn't quite as jarring as the one between Jess and Sunny on FaceTime, where Sunny scoffs a bit at the idea that Juliet could have been beaten by her spouse. 

It's not that Sunny scoffs; there's a real myth that this can't happen to a woman who is a strident progressive feminist, or a white, highly educated middle-class woman. It's that Jess calls him out for scoffing and then proceeds to give a lecture that feels pulled from an HR handbook, like this scene had to pass a specific wording thanks to well-meaning lawyers. Not that I am complaining exactly about my TV spelling out the accepted psychological conventional wisdom about abused spouses in large, friendly letters for the very slow ones in the back of the room. But it does make me wonder what they think the average viewer's intelligence level is.

The University scene is forgiving enough that it comes off like a bookend to Mel's breaking it off with Patrick at the top of the episode, a settling up of the accounts for these lives they were allowed to create after Gerry was blessedly removed from the world. (Unfortunately, Asif was not given the same opportunity, though that does give one hope maybe he'll get to go back to his.) Like Mel, who doesn't try to run when the cops pull up to take her in, merely declaring she didn't do it, Juliet is preparing herself for the worst that could come from Jess's request to interview Ticking Teenage Timebomb Taylor, a questioning that Juliet will almost assuredly be unable to sit in on or control, and the result of which will tell us just how many of these people are guilty, if any at all.

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. Season 7 is already greenlit.