'Unforgotten' Season 6 Features the Return of the Ram

As we begin the second installment of this season's Unforgotten, it's worth remembering that this series creates characters with troubled, ugly pasts. It's supposed to help the audience maintain a distance, making it easier to accept when a case from 20 or 40 years ago upends lives. Even in Season 5, when the case was still relatively recent, everyone connected to it underwent significant life changes, and some had become better people as a result. The show's main problems usually stem from seasons where this fails to be effective, when the punishment seems disproportionate, or when it doesn't feel like justice.

Season 6 is taking a different approach; these characters are terrible people now, today, not half a lifetime ago. Asif is sympathetic, a struggling Afghan immigrant trying to help his cousin (sorry, not brother), Hassan, resettle in a functional country. However, the reality is that he's forcing a traumatized, intelligent, skilled young man to pick fruit in an abusive system, and the kid is trapped because he's there illegally. Marty is a horror show, a young man radicalized by the manosphere who beats his mother and keeps her co-dependent on him. As for Melinda... well, when you ask your priest out for a drink because going to his house is a bad idea, God's not going to follow. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Likewise, Juliet Cooper isn't wrong for not caving in to a union that wants to throw her under the bus, but she's not making the best life choices either. The second episode is where Unforgotten digs into the original case files and brings in the rest of the team; Fran, Kaz, and Murray are given their marching orders to dig up paperwork while Jess and Sunny visit the surviving family to tell them their loved one's body has been found. Let's dive into what we learn about Gerry's disappearance in 2021.