Unforgotten season 6 episode 1 recap: who is the dead body found in the marsh?

Unforgotten season 6 sees Sinéad Keenan and Sanjeev Bhaskar back as Jess and Sunny for another baffling cold case - this time focusing on human remains that have been discovered on Whitney Marsh.

With Dr Balcombe’s expert analysis of the human spine, it’s evident the remains are relatively recent, and her guess is the body was put there already dismembered. With this knowledge, Jess and Sunny begin to search the area, believing other body parts may not be too far away - but soon the case turns out to be more complex than they could have imagined, weaving the lives of characters from all walks of life.

Here's everything that happens in Unforgotten season 6 episode 1...

The series opens with DI Sunny Khan having dinner alone in a restaurant after work when DS Fran Lingley calls with news the human remains have been found on Whitney Marsh and Sunny dashes straight there. He calls Jess just as she is about to have dinner with her husband, Steve, and Steve isn't impressed when the nice meal he has made goes to waste when she heads back to work.

Dr Balcombe is already at the marsh and tells Jess and Sunny that judging by a Harrington Rod, used to treat scoliosis on the spine that has been found this is a fairly recent case. She explains the rods were used between the '70s and the '90s so she can date the bones to within the last 50 years. There are also cut marks on the spine, suggesting that when the remains were put into the marsh, they were already dismembered and this isn't a simple case of someone falling in the water and drowning.

As Jess and Sunny discuss where the other body parts might be in the marsh, a suspicious Jess is worrying about why her husband cooked her seabass. They decide to get a search team in to find the rest of the remains, while Sunny asks how Steve cooked the seabass - but Jess says she will let him know tomorrow. However, when she gets home she finds her fish in the cat bowl and Steve is nowhere to be seen.

In County Cork, Ireland, forthright political pundit Melinda Ricci is arguing with her boss at the cable news channel where she works. She presents Mel's Minute for the station, bringing her extreme views to the nation, but she has other things on her mind, like visiting her fiance, Patrick, in hospital, who is learning to walk again after a horrific car accident. Mel watches his determination to walk in a physio session and praises him for doing so well, but she hugs him, she sees a worried look on the doctor's face and he later tells her in private that Patrick is unlikely to ever walk again.

In Deal, Kent, a young man with additional needs called Marty Bains, is putting roses in the sea and telling his late father that he is sorry and wishing him a happy birthday. His mum calls to remind him he has missed an appointment at the mental health surgery and he dashes off. Once there he realises he has missed the appointment but the receptionist gives him a new one. When he gets home, he gives his mum lunch, but their home isn't well cared for and she is clearly bedbound and very unwell.

Inside a cargo ship off the coast, there are illegal immigrants sitting inside a shipping container in the dark and watching football on their phones. Once off the boat, a lorry driver lets the men out of the back of the container by the side of the road and they run off into the woods. One of them is meeting his friend, Asif, who is in his car doing a British citizenship test, and they are thrilled to be reunited. The rest get into a minibus, but they don't realise the police are watching. Asif and his friend go to a house where other illegal immigrants are staying and they talk about where they go from there.

In central London, a tutor called Juliette Cooper gets a call from her daughter, Taylor's private school to say she has made an unprovoked attack and has been suspended. Before Jules can leave work to get her daughter, a colleague corners her with an issue with one of her students and tells her they need to have a meeting. It turns out a student has made a complaint against her which Jules denies but promises to apologise for. But she soon has bigger problems as her daughter, Taylor, refuses to be sorry for attacking another student, and it eventually comes out that Taylor hit her because she made a comment about Taylor's father taking his own life.

As the search for the missing remains takes place, they eventually find a dismembered male leg, which has been wrapped in bin bags and partially preserved. They take it to Dr Balcombe and she works out that the person the leg belonged to was killed by a knife wound to the upper thigh. She also takes bone samples from the spine and the leg to see if they are a match.

Sunny discovers the marsh was last drained in 2009 and was drained for 2 years before it flooded again. With it being unlikely that remains would be undiscovered in the two years the marsh was drained, it means they have been put there sometime after 2011, narrowing down Jess and Sunny's search to the last 13 years.

After the search for the remains comes to an end, they have just the spine and the leg to go with, but there is a stroke of luck when Sunny announces to Jess they have a match.

The DNA from the leg and spine matches someone called Gerrard Samuel Cooper, who was reported missing on Wednesday, 24 February 2021 when he was aged 58. Sunny says it was his wife who reported him missing, and we see his wife is Juliette, the lecturer with the wayward daughter who has been suspended.

Sunny tells Jess that there was an investigation into his disappearance, they never found a body and so it was assumed he took his own life by jumping into the Thames.

Sunny continues that the OIC on the case at the time was then jailed in 2022 for multiple corruption charges, but that isn't all, he is also someone that Sunny charged himself and his name is Ram Sidhu.

But as Sunny's voiceover is playing out, we see Ram in jail, and then flashes of Melinda praying, Marty talking to extremists online, Juliette drinking and Asif looking stressed - so now we know they are all being lined up as potential suspects. But are any of them guilty of murder?

Unforgotten season 6 airs on ITV1 on Sunday and Monday evenings at 9pm. All six episodes are also available as a box set on ITVX now.