'Unforgotten' Recap: Season 6 Episode 4

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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The detectives continue to interview Marty about Gerry Cooper, who employed Marty at his pub. Gerry and Marty shared right-wing conspiracy theories, and Gerry inveighed against the COVID vaccine to the extent that Marty told his parents not to get it when it was offered. Soon after they refused a vaccine, Marty’s dad got COVID. He died after several weeks of suffering, on February 19, 2021, five days before Gerry disappeared.

There are multiple threatening texts from Marty to Gerry about the furlough money Gerry failed to give to Marty, but they continue after Gerry’s disappearance. There are also plenty of anonymous threats between Gerry and antagonists on social media over politics.

Marty has one arrest on his record, from when he was studying computer programming at school. He regularly picked the locks of fellow students’ rooms and then sat in them waiting for them to return, not taking anything. He said he was looking for a friend.

Only one incident went south, when a drunken man got aggressive and Marty began to choke him. Marty was asked to leave school and only received a caution from the police, because the student didn’t want to press charges; he admitted that he had used inflammatory language about disability. Marty is living with autism.

The property management company with which Gerry worked to lease his residential properties has said that Gerry commonly argued with his tenants, and one dispute with an Afghan family involved the police. The Dowaris complained about a damp problem that was making them sick.

Asif served as the translator for the Dowaris in the dispute, through a contract with the local council, which also paid the rent of the Dowaris and other refugees who lived in Gerry’s properties. When the detectives arrive to speak with Asif, his newly arrived friend Hassan is buying fake residency papers; Asif sees the detectives and sends Hassan and the forger fleeing out the back door.

Asif tells Sunny and Jess that he doesn’t recall specifics of the Dowari case: Gerry didn’t maintain many of his properties, and it wasn’t uncommon for the police to be involved in disputes. Asif stopped translating for the council in September, 2020.

When the detectives leave, Asif’s partner Sam arrives home and asks who they were. Asif tells him social services. Sam then tells Asif that he will forgive Asif for housing the illegally arrived Hassan in his house if Hassan moves out that day and Asif minimizes contact with him. Asif refuses, telling Sam he can call the police if he wants to do something about it.

The council that employed Asif as a translator tells the detectives that he was an outstanding contractor. He maintained contact with the Dowaris after his contract ended, helping them for free. A council worker does recall Asif once saying that people like Gerry would be “dealt with” in his home country of Afghanistan, but Asif was always cordial to Gerry in person.

The Dowaris moved out of Gerry’s property in February of 2021, and then abruptly left their new home and disappeared at the end of that month – just after Gerry disappeared.

After their fight, Sam apologizes to Asif and tells him he can’t imagine how Asif manages to continue on after everything he has been through. Sam wants to help Hassan – but then immigration officers appear at the door. There has been a raid on the farm where Hassan has been working, and now officers want to search Sam’s house. When Sam and Asif are brought to the police station, Sam tells the officers that Asif was not involved with Hassan and should be let go; he himself is responsible. The officers nevertheless take a DNA swab from Asif in relation to the disappearance of Gerry.

Jess and Sunny are also investigating Mel Ricci after determining that she was having an affair with Gerry. Mel served four years in the Navy but was released after a disciplinary incident with a Muslim officer. She then started a beauty business that did well until the 2008 crash. She lost her business and house, then had a bad experience renting and wrote a diatribe online about her Asian landlord. That went viral and led to a weekly newspaper column. She was dropped by newspapers and moved to Ireland in March, 2021, and is now an inflammatory broadcaster.

The detectives set up a video call with Mel through the local police. She says she met Gerry through UK United, the nationalist forum he set up. She says they were briefly friends, then admits upon being pressed that they had a brief romance in the summer of 2020. She heard from a friend after she moved to Ireland that he had disappeared. Her answers are cagey and inconsistent. Jess and Sunny don’t believe her when she says Gerry wasn’t violent towards her.

Mel burns her 2021 calendar after the interview.

Texts between her and Gerry show she is lying: their romance lasted from at least late 2018 through early 2021, when Gerry sent several beseeching and threatening texts that suggest blackmail. Jess asks Sunny to fly to Ireland to interview Mel; Jess is caught up in drama at home.

She has reconnected with her sister Debbie, with whom her husband Steve slept several times. She doesn’t think she will ever be able to trust Steve again and is considering paths forward.

Sunny’s relationships are much less fraught, but still confusing. The coroner Leanne has been ignoring his calls after a night out where she kissed him. When he asks her about the calls in person, she distractedly says she’ll call him soon; she’s been busy.

The discovery of Gerry’s remains has created extra conflict between his wife Juliet and daughter Taylor, who refuses to return to her posh boarding school and is questioning whether anything she knows about her mother is true. She asks Juliet if she killed Gerry, to Juliet’s shock. Juliet emphatically says no, and Taylor asks about the argument Gerry and Juliet had the night he disappeared. Juliet reassures Taylor that she would never hurt Gerry – but she asks her not to mention their frequent arguments to the police, because they’ll come to the wrong conclusion.

Juliet faces other pressures: after blowing up at a student who accused her of racism, the school board is offering her early retirement.

Jess is trying to organize an interview with Taylor independent of Juliet. But first Taylor tells Juliet something she has never shared, and Juliet goes to the police with it. A week before Gerry disappeared, the 11-year-old Taylor came home to find Marty sitting in their house angry, saying he wanted to hurt Gerry. Taylor knew him from the pub downstairs and said that would upset her, and Marty apologized and cooled off, leaving after some time. Taylor never reported this incident because she liked Marty and didn’t want to get him in trouble; Juliet is hesitant to tell the police for that same reason.

After being swabbed for DNA, Marty has locked the house he shares with his homebound mother and refused to admit even her nurse. So the nurse calls the police, who break down the door to find Marty’s mother unconscious. Marty himself is gone; he’s running to the ocean.