'Unforgotten' Recap: Season 6 Episode 5

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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DNA taken from the sweatshirt Gerry Cooper was wearing the night he was assaulted outside his pub has a match: Asif. When interviewed about it, he answers “no comment” to a slew of questions. He claims to have stopped helping the Dowaris – the Afghan family for whom he served as translator in a dispute with Gerry, who was their landlord – when his contract ended in September, 2020. But another worker told the police Asif said he continued to help the family pro bono. 

Asif is not the only one who has seemingly been lying about a relationship with Gerry. Sunny flies to Ireland to interview Mel in person after discovering through Gerry’s messages that she vastly understated the length of her affair with him. She admits that she lied, claiming that she was worried that she would become a person of interest in Gerry’s killing. 

But she still denies other suppositions of the detectives: that Gerry was violent towards her, even though one of Gerry’s former employees has now reported seeing him hit his wife Juliet once; or that he blackmailed her, as several messages from him suggest. She says she doesn’t recall those messages. And she says she suddenly moved to Ireland two months earlier than planned so that she could take longer to settle into a new home, even though that meant she left England right after Gerry disappeared. 

The detectives have learned via Gerry’s messages to Mel that he suggested she take out a storage facility back in England between his pub and her flat a few weeks before he disappeared. When Sunny asks to search it, Mel tells him to get a warrant.

Mel’s life is already falling apart. Her fiance has been in a crippling car crash, and she has now decided that she has to leave him, telling him that she’s a bad person. She lies for a living, she says, as an inflammatory commentator who no longer believes what she spouts, and she has done one truly terrible thing. He deserves better than her.

She has been finding comfort at church, in both the conventional way and an unsanctioned way. She has been sleeping with the local priest, who tells her after she breaks off her engagement and her questioning by the police that she can’t come to the church anymore; it’s a small town. 

Indeed, it’s hard to keep secrets in the community, as a local policeman tells Sunny, recommending that he speak to the priest about Mel. Sunny asks the priest if Mel ever shared any secrets with him. He reluctantly admits that she said she had a baby during a long relationship with a married man.

Meanwhile, Mel is fired from her job for “moral turpitude.”

A jacket with a bloodstain is found in her storage unit back in England. The blood is Gerry’s. 

Mel is arrested.

While in Ireland, Sunny once again calls the coroner Leanne, asking to talk after a drunken night in which she kissed him; she has since been essentially ignoring him. She finally returns his message and apologizes, telling him there are things in her life she should have told him about. They can meet when he returns to England. 

Jess has a much harder conversation with her husband, Steve. She has reconciled with her sister, with whom Steve cheated on her, and learned that they slept together several times. She now demands that Steve tell her the whole truth, if he wants to salvage their relationship and family. He confirms Debbie’s story, and says there were other women, too – but it’s all in the past; he has changed. He’s been seeing an online therapist who thinks he has a sex addiction. He wants to rebuild their marriage.

Jess doesn’t. She takes off her wedding ring and drops it in his beer, telling him they’re done forever. 

She at least has her mother, who moves in with her for a time, telling her they’re in this together.

The police put out a plea for information from anyone who saw anything suspicious at the parking lot next to the marsh where Gerry’s body was found, in pieces. Someone has come forward: her father biked past the lot on his way home from work late at night, and saw someone throwing something into the marsh around the time Gerry disappeared.

He expands on this to the police: the person was taking something out of a bag when he came upon them, and they stopped when they saw him. After he passed, he heard a splash, and then a car start. It was dark and raining, and the person was wearing a mask, so he didn’t see any identifying details. He will check his diary for the date. 

The date is proving complicated. The detectives have been able to determine that a car entered the parking lot at 3:29 AM – the day before Gerry was reported missing. Its license plate isn’t registered to anyone; it officially doesn’t exist. 

The detectives wonder if Gerry disappeared a day earlier, and Juliet just didn’t see him at all in the day before she reported him missing; maybe their marriage was rough and he was sleeping in a separate room. She bristles at the suggestion. She also refuses to let the detectives speak to her daughter, Taylor.

They’re already trying to do so, through Taylor’s school – but Taylor has just attacked a teacher, the latest in a string of violations, and so is expelled. Juliet tries to have a lawyer prevent an interview with Taylor, but she doesn’t have any recourse. She asks Taylor not to tell the police about her arguments with Gerry, particularly the night he disappeared.

Juliet has also resisted an offer of early retirement from her school after a student reported her. When she is informed that she has been suspended pending an investigation, she pours coffee on her boss, telling him she will fight.

Later, Juliet sits in the cafeteria with the student who accused her of racism and apologizes both for losing her temper and giving her a book with a provocative title. I should have done better, she says. The student tells her that she and her friends are just as scared and frustrated about the world as Juliet. She doesn’t want Juliet to lose her job.

Marty is desperate to find Juliet. He has fled his home after seemingly overdosing his bedbound mother on barbiturates; she has been brought to the hospital unconscious after her nurse called the police to break down the door. Marty is agitated and stands at the edge of a cliff, apologizing to his mother, when a man walks a dog past and asks if he’s okay. Marty flees. 

He goes to Gerry’s pub, where he used to work, but it has been torn down. A former regular sees him outside and recognizes him. She tells him that Juliet moved away. Through Taylor’s social media, Marty figures out where they moved, and goes there. A woman asks him why he's loitering there.