'Unforgotten' Recap: Season 5 Episode 6

Unforgotten is available to stream on the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode and previous four seasons.
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Tony Hume’s wife Emma finds Ebele sleeping in her car outside the Hume house and tells her to go away, thinking she is a reporter. Ebele tells Emma that she is Tony’s daughter. She found out when she was 18, contacted him when she was 23, and now she’s 58. He has regularly given her money over the decades. She asks Emma to tell Tony she loathes him—and screw Emma, too, given that she knew his economic policies were harming people like Ebele and she did nothing.

Tony is at the police station, having been pulled from a flight to Zurich. But the detectives speak to Karol, who has voluntarily turned himself in, first. Bank records show he withdrew two grand from an account the day after his appointment with Precious, then deposited it again the next day. He explains that he was going to pay her off, but when he arrived he saw a car at the house and she wasn’t there. He went inside, where the floor was wet as if it had just been mopped, and saw his laptop and took it back. As he left, he saw an older man with a mop and bucket.

Karol says he began taking upskirt photos while feeling isolated and then being attacked, twice, for being Jewish. He doesn’t make excuses, and says it briefly made him feel better—but it was worse in the long run. He left the country after retrieving his laptop, assuming that Precious had downloaded the images and would continue to extort him.

Jay also regrets some things: he brings flowers to the hospital where the woman he pushed and robbed is convalescing. His girlfriend, Cheryl, leaves him for another man who has hot water in his home.

DNA tests confirm that Jay is the son of Ebele and a man other than the cult leader David Bell. They also confirm that the body found in the garden of a flat, reported anonymously to the police, is that of Joseph Bell, Jay’s half-brother. The police also find another bullet in the house where Precious was killed, from the same gun.

Tony at first claims ignorance to the police, but when faced with a charge at a gas station right near the house where Precious was killed on the night she was killed, as well as an identification of him by Karol, he talks.

He had a brief relationship with Ebele’s mother, and only found out that a child had resulted from it when Ebele was in her early 20s. He then offered her financial support. He had no contact with Precious until late 2015, when she called and asked for similar support, which he gave. In 2016, Ebele told him that Precious was homeless. His wife’s sister had just passed and her house was vacant, so Tony met Precious and gave her keys. 

Then one night, Joseph, messed up on drugs, called Tony and threatened him, demanding money. Tony called Ebele and she agreed to go over—and he decided to go as well. Tony got there first. Joseph pulled a gun on him, Precious lunged at it, and it went off, hitting Joseph. Tony went to help, then heard another gunshot: Precious had killed herself.

Ebele appeared, and Tony explained what happened. He left her to dispose of Precious’ body and took Joseph’s himself. He buried it in the garden of the flat Ebele was renting at the time, because he was paying the rent and had keys and figured it was private.

He had panicked the day before and called the police to anonymously report the location of Joseph’s body before going to Zurich. He didn’t know where Ebele had put Precious.

Jess returns home to hear her husband Steve playing with her delighted boys. Her mother tells her Steve loves and needs her, and that her kids need him. Steve himself has already told her that her sister was lying about sleeping with him—they only kissed. He felt abandoned by Jess and wanted to hurt her; but now he doesn’t want to leave anymore. She doesn’t believe him.

Ebele tells the detectives that Tony has probably spun events to them. She says that her mother was a cleaner at the stockbrokers where Tony worked; her grandparents also worked there. Tony came to the office late one night and pressured her to drink with her, then raped the teenaged girl. Ebele’s grandparents blamed her mother when she became pregnant.

Her mother wrote to Tony, who didn’t reply. Tony’s father, a director at the bank, told her he’d fire her and her parents if she did anything. So her mother gave birth to Ebele, wrote her a letter to be given to her when she was 18, and committed suicide.

After Ebele turned 18 and found out who her father was, she tried contacting him and only made progress after she got his DNA from a glass after a lecture. When she threatened to reveal the DNA results to the press, he stopped threatening her and started paying her. Ebele didn’t tell Precious about Tony for a long time, knowing that she would mess up the financial arrangement—and Ebele needed the money.

She didn’t initially question Tony’s account of the night Precious and Joseph died, but she doesn’t believe it now. Tony told her the police might not believe it was all an accident because Ebele had a criminal record, and so they hid the bodies. She wanted to stay with Precious, and held her all night. Then it was daylight, and she had to hide her daughter in the chimney. A friend later came and drywalled over the fireplace.

But what about Jay, who told Tony he witnessed events that night? He was on the second floor of the house—his mom didn’t want her grandpa or mom to meet him. He heard shouting, so he peeked downstairs. Joseph was yelling at Tony, who slammed him into the wall, saying he could make him disappear. Then Joseph pulled a gun and Tony backed away. Precious tried to grab the gun and it went off, hitting Precious. Tony asked for the gun and Joseph quietly gave it to him before holding his mother’s hand. Tony then shot Joseph in the back of the head.

Jay hid upstairs for two days before coming out and taking his mom’s laptops and clothes that had been left.

Presented with this account, Tony admits to the detectives that he lied to himself for years: that it wasn’t rape, that his economic policies were the right ones. Then, in an instant, all of that was pulled from his eyes, and he decided to extinguish it. He shot Joseph. He has tried to make amends for the last six years, but of course it has not been enough.

Jess tells him she doesn’t believe he’s sincere; he was just trying to launder his reputation. And now he’ll be known as a rapist and murderer. He’ll be charged with both crimes.

Except she’s wrong. Ebele, who didn’t know Jay existed, goes to visit him at his home. She hugs him and tells him she’s so sorry. He tells her he lied to the police. Precious did accidentally kill Joseph in the struggle and then shoot herself, just as Tony said. But the struggles of their whole family all result from Tony’s rape of Ebele’s mother, so he deserved to be punished.