[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Unforgotten Season 6 Episode 1.]
A new cold case has been reopened in Unforgotten, and this time, the case is getting personal. Season 6 premiered on Sunday, August 24, on PBS, and the crime drama opened with Detectives Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and Jess James (Sinéad Keenan) being called to investigate very limited human remains (a spine and a leg, specifically) discovered on Whitney Marsh.
Pathologist Leanne Balcombe (Georgia Mackenzie) helped determine that the body was a male’s, that it must have been dismembered before being strewn in the marshes in which they were found, and that the victim had to have lost considerable blood beforehand as well. What they didn’t expect was for the clues to lead them to a corrupt cop from Sunny’s past. That is none other than Ram Sidhu (Phaldut Sharma), who was last seen in Unforgotten Season 4. What the episode’s final moments revealed was that Ram is now in prison and could be connected to this season’s murder. Ram’s return was previously teased in photos from Season 6, but the nature of his return was unknown. (For a deeper look at what’s to come this season, see here.)
Four new potential suspects were introduced in the episode we all. And as always with Unforgotten (which is one of the few shows on PBS that’s completely original and not based on a book franchise), the season will slowly reveal how these four suspects are possibly connected to the cold case.
This season’s suspects includes a controversial TV commentator Melinda Ricci (MyAnna Buring), who we learn is engaged to man trying to regain his ability to walk after a bad injury. Melinda received bad news that it was unlikely that her husband-to-be would ever walk again.
There’s also a London college professor, Juliet Cooper (Victoria Hamilton), whose husband died by suicide and the trauma is causing her teen daughter, Taylor Cooper (Pixie Davies), to act out in school. Juliet was also threatened with disciplinary action at work after a white student reported her for recommending a big that used a racial slur in the title. The book, Juliet explained to her boss, was written by a Black woman and the shocking title served a specific purpose pursuant to the book’s subject. The student felt it was wrong nonetheless. Juliet was very defensive when told she had to take a sensitivity course.
Sam Taylor
Another suspect is Martin Baines (Maximilian Fairley), an autistic man who’s struggling to keep his life organized with a mother at home who needs constant physical care. Their house is in complete disorder and they struggle to keep it clean in the aftermath of the death of Martin’s father. Martin has a hard time connecting with new people, but he has people in his life who are empathetic and helpful as well, such as the desk staff at a neighborhood clinic. He also spends considerable time in online chatrooms with extremists.
The final suspect is Asif Syed (Elham Ehsas), who was preparing to take his U.K. citizenship test. Asif helps illegal immigrants get into the U.K. This reunited him with a friend, Hassan (Ahmad Sakhi), a trained doctor who’s now considering applying for asylum in the hopes of better career opportunities. Asif warned that he “risked his life” for a similar hope and he was still forced into a detention center.
Sunny and Jess were having personal struggles of their while investigating the cold case. Sunny was struggling to find time to see his family, and Jess was suspicious of her husband, who uncharacteristically and unexpectedly made her a fish dinner. The next night, he was gone from their home.
As for the investigation, Sunny and Jess had already determined that the victim had to have been murdered within the last 13 years. The spine and leg turned out to be a match, and the DNA was matched with Gerrard Samuel Cooper, Juliet’s husband and Taylor’s father. Sunny remembered this case well. He said Juliet was the one who called in Gerrard’s disappearance, but a body was never found. His death was labeled a suicide by jumping into the Thames River. With Gerrard’s remains finally found, the suicide has turned into a homicide. But that’s not where the twists ended.
The officer in charge of the Cooper case has been in jail since 2022 on multiple counts of corruption. Sunny charged the man, Ram, himself. The cold case is bringing up skeletons from Sunny’s own past in Unforgotten Season 6, with the premiere ending on a shot of Ram in Ashbourne Prison.
Ram was one of the suspects in Season 4’s murder investigation. While he wasn’t revealed to be the killer in the end, he was booked for preventing a lawful burial of a body and for ties to the killer’s cocaine smuggling operation. Is he now a suspect in the Cooper murder as well?
Unforgotten, Sundays, 10/9c, PBS