'Unforgotten' Recap: Season 6 Episode 2

Unforgotten is available to stream on the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous and following episodes and previous seasons.
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Having identified remains found in Whitney Marsh as belonging to Gerard Cooper, Sunny and Jess visit his wife Juliet to break the news. She never believed Gerard had died by suicide, as the initial police investigation determined after finding Gerard’s car near a bridge two weeks after Juliet reported him missing.

For one, the Coopers owned a rental property near that parking spot, which would explain the car’s location. Gerard had taken over a pub in Stepney that his uncle had managed in 2014. He loved running it, as a native of the nearby neighborhood Bow, and all the locals loved him. He also had three rental properties, so when the pandemic hit the Coopers struggled. The pub closed, and then tenants in their other properties stopped paying rent. Gerard borrowed money from some shady people to keep up with the mortgages without Juliet’s knowledge.

In early February of 2021, Gerard was attacked outside the pub, above which he, Juliet, and their daughter Taylor lived. He finally told Juliet about the loans, and that he owed about 17 thousand pounds. Juliet only met one of the lenders once – someone named Markaj came to the pub five days after Gerard was attacked.

Soon after, on February 24, Juliet called the police when Gerard failed to show up for dinner at home on their wedding anniversary. Juliet had tried to call Gerard multiple times to no answer, and talked with a brewer he was supposed to meet who told her that he had uncharacteristically cancelled half an hour before their meeting.

Juliet thought the police investigation into Gerard’s disappearance was perfunctory, and she was disappointed that they didn’t look more into the lenders, despite her pushing. When she found out that one of the detectives who led the investigation, Ram Sidhu, was charged with corruption, she asked for the case to be reopened, but nothing happened.

However, there is no record with the police of this request.

Jess finds something off about Juliet. Juliet now lives in a nice, large house that she says she bought after selling off the rental properties, and sends Taylor to an expensive school. Perhaps she benefited from life insurance.

Juliet tells the detectives that she didn’t know Gerard had taken out life insurance until after he died; it paid around 400 thousand pounds. The pub they once ran and lived above was called the Three Crowns, but has been torn down to make way for housing.

Juliet says that Gerard’s relationship with some of their tenants was tense; the properties were in deprived areas, and many tenants barely eked by.

She and Gerard met in early 2009, through their local Labour Party. He had just been through a messy divorce, but they married four months after meeting and had Taylor by the end of the year.

Juliet has plenty to worry about beyond the discovery of her husband’s body. Her daughter has been getting in trouble at school ever since her father disappeared. Now that Gerard has been confirmed as murdered, Taylor tells Juliet that when she thought her father had died by suicide, she assumed it was her fault. Juliet reassures her that Gerard adored his daughter.

Juliet herself is the subject of a complaint in her job as a history professor. She finds “Racist” written on the boards in a lecture hall. But, despite the pleas of her boss, she refuses to bow to the student union, who are demanding she take a course on microaggressions. 

At least she has a fair-paying job. Hassan, a newly arrived Afghan immigrant, is driven by his friend Asif to a farm to pick strawberries. He’s given two hours’ less wages at the end of the day, because the farmer says he worked slower than everyone else. Asif, waiting to pick him up, demands that Hassan apologize to the farmer for complaining – Hassan needs the money.

Marty is autistic but thinks about getting a job so that he can support his ailing, homebound mother Dot. But he’s not a great caretaker, as the nurse Doreen recognizes when she visits Dot for a check-up and finds a bruise on her face. Doreen suggests again that she involve social services, but Dot refuses to leave Marty for a home; the idea causes him to break down. Marty later tells Doreen that he and his mother need each other.

He spends his time on dark corners of the internet, like an incel forum. His psychiatrist refuses to countenance Marty’s internet-addled sexist talk about “deserving” a girlfriend, but ups the dosage of Marty’s antidepressant.

Sunny has sworn off dating apps, although he’s lonely. Jess still doesn’t trust her husband after he cheated on her with her own sister, but she finally reopens contact with her sister Debbie, calling with a request to meet up.

The detectives believe Gerard’s killer was interrupted as they disposed of his dismembered body in Whitney Marsh – why else would the leg they found still be wrapped in plastic when the torso wasn’t? So they try to track down cameras or anything else that might give them a view of the parking lot.

Jess visits Markaj, who lent money to Gerard. Even though his father and cousin both served time, he insists he runs a clean business through his restaurants. He says he lent Gerard 12 thousand pounds with interest. He disputes the idea that he killed Gerard – dead men don’t pay debts, he says. He points the finger at Juliet, wondering why she was so eager to blame him.

Ram Sidhu tells Sunny the same thing. His initial thought was that Gerard had walked away from his marriage when he disappeared. He thought Juliet was trying too hard to push the investigation towards the money lenders. He also mentions that the bar manager at Gerard’s pub thought a former employee was behind the assault on Gerard shortly before his death; the employee had threatened Gerard a few times.

Mel Ricci also has a connection to Gerard, though the detectives don’t know it yet. An anchor for a conservative news channel, she’s beginning to have doubts about her fiery segments, but her producer tells her their audience doesn’t want to hear them. Her fiance was in a crippling car accident and his intense medical care might not be covered by insurance because he had consumed a small amount of alcohol, even though the other driver was clearly at fault, running a red light with three times the legal limit of alcohol in his system.

Mel’s mother mentions Gerard’s appearance in the newspaper to Mel – she met Mel and Gerard together once. News of the discovery of Gerard’s remains shocks Mel. She calls and leaves a message for someone: if you say anything to anyone that brings people to my door, you’ll regret it.

Juliet deletes a voicemail.