Spoiler alert: this recap is for people watching Unforgotten season five. Do not read on unless you have watched episode three and please don’t post spoilers if you’ve watched ahead.
The series reached its midway mark with the plot thickening nicely. Will the crime be traced to a cult in Wales or someone closer to home? Here are your case notes …
Family of Cursed Light, more like
As the Bishop Street team probed into murder victim Precious Falade, her tragically turbulent life came into focus. As a pregnant 15-year-old, she’d been recruited or abducted by a cult called the Family of Blessed Light, based on a farm in Wales – hence the Welsh road sign in the title sequence. Her estranged mother Ebele (Martina Laird) assumed the baby’s father was cult leader David Bell, who was 42 at the time (sinister echoes of the Kidwelly scandal) – putting him in his mid-60s now. Anyone we’ve met so far? Doubtful.
Despite its desiccated state, Ebele insisted on seeing her daughter’s body. “The things they do to us,” she sobbed. “Who?” asked DCI Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan), her ears pricking up. “Men. It’s always a man,” replied Ebele. Grim statistics would concur, but is writer Chris Lang laying groundwork for a female killer twist?
When questioned by Jessie and DI Sunil (Sunny) Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar), we heard about Ebele’s own record. Multiple alcohol-related arrests included an ABH charge against the doorman of a city stockbroker’s office involving a firearm. She clammed up when asked about it by Columbo fan Sunny (“just one more thing … ”). Ebele claimed she last saw the homeless Precious six months before her murder. Afterwards, Ebele cut off contact. Mother-of-two Jessie sat in silent judgment. Ebele looked doomed to an alcoholic relapse.
Meanwhile, Precious’s former social worker told DS Fran Lingley (Carolina Main) that Precious had suffered from FASD (foetal alcohol spectrum disorder). Out of guilt, Ebele refused to accept this diagnosis. Mother and daughter had a violently angry relationship, in which Ebele was the aggressor. And you’ll never guess who Precious’s other case worker was …
Sunny in Paris > Emily in Paris
“London nearly killed me,” Karol Wojski (Max Rinehart) told a colleague. “It wears you down until you become someone you don’t even like.” As Precious’s social worker, his last appointment with her was at the Hammersmith house a month before her death. Karol quit the next day and left the country two weeks later. As things stood, he was the last person to see her alive. No wonder Jessie sent Sunny across the Channel to “see the whites of his eyes”. Loved that “Sunny Calm” sign greeting our grieving hero at Gare du Nord. He’s neither sunny nor calm right now.
Karol wasn’t in a happy place either. He rowed with girlfriend Elise (Claire Ganaye), who was understandably more worried about fighting for custody of her daughters than having another child with Karol. He angrily accused her of antisemitism (“Untermensch” is a Nazi term for non-Aryans deemed as inferior), before stealing a luxury Swiss watch from the air freight warehouse. It might help his money problems, but it won’t solve his domestic or legal ones.
LA no-longer-confidential
Tony Hume (Ian McElhinney) rifled through the youth club files for the address of disadvantaged young Mustafa and visited his flat. He offered to help his family, but Mustafa’s proud Somali mother rejected his patronage. Together with Jessie’s withering assessment (“My local library was shut down because of that twat”), cancer-stricken Tony’s dying bid to make amends for his as-yet-unspecified crimes wasn’t going well. No wonder he was emailing an assisted dying facility in Switzerland.
As predicted by several commenters, the mysterious “LA” in the legal files for 64 Waterman Road led back to our guilty grandee, standing for “Lord Anthony”. His wife Emma (Hayley Mills) was the sister of the property’s late owner. It was Tony who had regularly popped round, paid off the squatters and changed the locks. He described them as “hostile, unpleasant people, capable of anything”, contrary to a neighbour saying they were “sweet and harmless”. It also took him five weeks to drop off the new keys at the solicitor’s office. Why the delay? And, as Jessie put it, “What could possibly connect the Tory lord and the sex worker?”
He handled Jessie’s questions with a politician’s slickness but was clearly rattled, promptly using a burner phone to leave a voice message: “What did you do? Call me.” If he’s not the murderer, he might know who is.
Watching the detectives
Did we detect a thaw in the frosty relationship between Jessie and Sunny? Temporarily, at least. She was more on the case and started getting her team’s names right. He had a timeline breakthrough, working out that the 1960s plasterboard had been patched up with newspaper dated 12 July 2016. Grudging respect was developing. That is, until Jessie grew frustrated at the “glacial pace” of the investigation. She later apologised, but too late. Sunny complained to DSI Clive Andrews (Colin R Campbell) and suggested Fran step up instead, before a parting shot of, “This really isn’t fucking working for me, sir”.
Both were distracted by domestic turmoil. “My gorgeous hubby™” was still ghosting Jessie. She finally reached her sister Debbie (Gráinne Keenan, real-life sister of Sinéad), and arranged to meet for a heart-to-heart, then cancelled when the case got tasty. This false start fuelled theories that it’s the elusive “Debs” with whom husband Steve had an affair.
Sunny grew distant from his pregnant fiancee, Sal (Michelle Bonnard). He confided in pathologist Dr Leanne Balcombe (Georgia Mackenzie) that he blamed himself for his former colleague Cassie’s death and was still heartbroken. Leanne assured him she understood. A touching scene of friendship amid all the misery. Yet there was time for one last hammer blow. Sal miscarried while Sunny was on the Eurostar and decamped to her mother’s, ignoring his desperate calls. He and Jessie have more in common than they know.
Prisoner Cell Block Jay
Precious’s estranged son Joseph, AKA Jay (Rhys Yates), was banged to rights. A stolen cash card had been found in his kitchen. There was CCTV of him using it. What’s more, his mugging victim was four months pregnant and nearly lost her baby. He bonded with his sympathetic lawyer over an unlikely appreciation of Fauvist art (“my dad got me into it”) but bail was refused. We asked last week how his girlfriend, Cheryl (Hebe Beardsall), would cope without her carer-cum-enabler? Well, by moving in a nasty new bloke, it seems.
Raised between a cult and the care system, Jay cuts an increasingly sympathetic figure. The closing scenes saw him make a phone call from prison. Leaving a voicemail message – on the same number as Tony’s? – he said: “You don’t know me but I know you. My mother was Precious Falade. I was there that night and I saw it all.” Flash to forensic investigators at 64 Waterman Road. They’d found blood all over the floorboards and were doing DNA tests. Now they recovered a bullet embedded in the wall. Was it the one that killed Precious? The home stretch is beautifully poised.
Line of the week
“What about our community? Our schools, hospitals, social care – in fact, all the things your party defunded for so many years? Who sorts those out? I suspect the money would really be more for your benefit than ours.” Sure, it was shoehorned in, but still satisfying when Tony was told where to stick his charity. Lang’s scripts seem much more politicised this series.
Notes and observations
Could Tory Tone be an ex-stockbroker? Did he abuse young Ebele and father Precious? See how he pointedly berated his grandson for “taking advantage” of a drunk woman last week.
Shades of Helen Mirren’s mighty DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, when Jessie told her team to “lose the ma’am, guv is fine”.
We’ve now met her mother, son, social worker and proxy landlord. But who killed Precious? Share your thoughts and theories below. The entire series is on ITVX but we’ll post these recaps after the weekly episodes on ITV1, so no spoilers if you’ve watched ahead please …
