We’re halfway through Unforgotten and exactly what I hoped would happen is happening – tension slowly but surely being cranked up with each episode. As flesh is gradually put on the bones of Jimmy’s murder, the stakes rise; how this finishes is anybody’s guess. Reading some of the guesses in the comments last week, I was intrigued by ID3446596 seeing parallels with An Inspector Calls and iharsten suggesting we haven’t heard the last of the stolen, yet-not-reported-stolen car. I agree that the Slater house is hiding something, and that a paedophile scandal would be a letdown. After all, this is ITV not the BBC.
Sir Philip Cross
Bolt cutters? Frankie C was an even nastier scrote than we thought. If you didn’t come up with the cash, then you’d be missing a few digits by the time Frankie was done with you. At least, that’s what old Fenwick crew villain Thomas Pinion (Alan Ford, Brick Top from Snatch, compellingly obnoxious as always) tells police. Pinion puts Frankie’s stay with the Fenwicks at about a year. He remembers the newly appointed entrepreneur tsar’s amputation approach as highly effective, and believes it’s likely he ran into Jimmy, who once borrowed £50 from the Fenwicks. Sir Philip’s flashback to Jimmy’s terrified face seems to back this up. This could be a good time to take a closer look at Jimmy’s phalanges. Rawlins from forensics looks for tell-tale signs of snip-and-run trauma, but nothing shows up.
It looks as if putting his daughter through law school could be the best money Sir Philip (Trevor Eve) ever spent, even if Bella gripes: “As a human rights lawyer, torture is a bit of a bugbear of mine and having my father accused of lopping people’s fingers off is, y’know, a tiny bit awkward.” Nonetheless, her “say nothing, do nothing, let them prove you lied” advice seems solid.
Keeping his yap shut, though, is not an option with Philip Gough. Whitehall is not as forgiving as the criminal underworld, and Gough assures him that, however this plays out, he’s done. “Seriously pissing off a prime minister is not a good career move.”
It may have been trebles and backslaps all round a heartbeat ago, but as quickly as the ruling class accepted him, they now slit his throat. The story about his criminal past runs in the press and all his denials count for nothing. The company share price drops 8% in less than an hour, and the board want him to step down as chairman. One front-page splash and their biggest asset is toxic to the brand.
Lizzie Wilton
It’s a conversation she prayed she’d never have to have, but Lizzie lays it bare with Ray about her abusive childhood, her time as a violent racist and the reason why she never takes off those rings.
“So I was just your penance, was I?” he asks.
Lizzie swears not, but detonating this particular bomb was always going to lead to heavy fallout, a point well illustrated when Curtis overhears enough of the Wiltons’ conversation to learn the truth about her past. With his useless junkie mum at home and his surrogate mother figure for the last three years now effectively destroyed, Curtis looks all set to spiral out of control. He’s a no-show for his maths exam, although Lizzie impressively fights his corner with the invigilator, getting him a resit.
Despite everything, you feel for Lizzie in these scenes, and you can see why Mike Leigh keeps coming back to Ruth Sheen. There’s a warmth and vulnerability about her that makes everyone she plays hard to hate. Still, we’re left wondering about her reliability when the Caribbean shopkeeper she and Erskine attacked contradicts her claim that she tried to stop the assault. He remembers a spitting, snarling, cheerleader, not the docile, put-upon waif Lizzie portrays.
Eric Slater
It all starts off so nicely with Eric’s fond reminiscences of sharing cigarettes with Jimmy at Arlingham House. He remembers JoJo, too, a girl barely out of school, having walked in on her having sex with “what’s-his-face from St Gildas” – Father Robert to you and I. We’d be inclined to think of Eric (Tom Courtenay) as an innocent bystander in all this, until Claire babbles something about the nights he never came home, and the cold soaks needed to “get it out”. It could be nothing, but the nasty black eye Claire sports that night, as Eric looks on menacingly, suggests something.
Robert Greaves
For someone who has been doing a lot of it recently, Robert’s not very good at lying. Sunny and Cassie clock immediately that he’s holding something back when he claims not to know any of the names from the diary. After a panic attack lands him in hospital, he gets further cause for anxiety when Sunny and Cassie return with the allegation about JoJo. It was a brief fling, and the worst mistake of his life, he tells them, and it all sounds plausible enough. But when he insists the last time that he spoke to her was 39 years ago, we know he’s lying. And he’s keeping quiet about his flashback, to what looks a lot like Jimmy stomping him out. Seems all that Liverpool-QPR football banter escalated quickly.
Notes & queries
- In keeping with the theme of past events wreaking havoc in the present, we have Cassie’s father tormented by his dead wife’s affair. Some commenters speculated that he might somehow be tied up in Jimmy’s death. He would be an outsider, but a mystery man’s two-year tryst with his wife certainly gives a conspiracy theorist something to dig into.
- Just as Sir Philip reels from the week from hell, he receives a phone call from one of the few remaining Fenwicks, Gordon, in Cyprus. It doesn’t sound like a social call.
- “I am the brand!” says Sir Philip as the board try to ditch him. Yes, your lordship, and that’s the problem.
- It’s a nice touch when Cassie and Sunny walk into the baptism just as Father Robert is renouncing the “deceit and corruptions of evil”. It put me in mind of Michael Corleone renouncing Satan as the heads of the five families get whacked.
- Who do you like as the killer now? Have this week’s developments changed anything? Please place all fevered speculation below the line.
