As the fifth episode of I, Jack Wright begins, Sally (Nikki Amuka-Bird) says it’s easy to think that everything that came out was caused by Jack’s death. She believes most of it was there already. Jack’s death just gave them a chisel to work existing fault lines. Georgia Wright (Zoe Tapper) tells John (Daniel Rigby) that he should prepare for his court statement. Bella Horrell (Sabrina Bartlett) calls John to say Gray (John Simm) has been attacked. John learns they’re taking him to the Royal London. He tells Georgia that he’s bad before rushing out of the door. At the hospital, John tells Gray he’s sorry. Bobby Botham (James Fleet) joins Rose (Gemma Jones) at chemo and gives her an update on Gray. DC Kat Jones (Liz Kingsman) tells DCI Hector Morgan (Harry Lloyd) that she got information back about Arnaud Tissier (Jalil Lespert) and his finances. There were three years of losses totaling nearly 4 million.
The minutes from a board meeting two months ago show a proposed share dilution and a promised investment by Sally Wright. Meanwhile, Arnaud tells Sally he lied because he’s afraid she’d make assumptions. He denies killing him. Arnaud saw Jack three days before he died in London. He wanted to talk to Jack about what she found in his desk. Arnaud reveals that Jack had a DNA test done on Josh and confirmed he was not Josh’s father. Emily (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) listens to voicemail messages from Kyle (Callum Adams) who asks her to call him. Arnaud admits Jack told him he had already changed the will. He insists he was in Paris the night Jack died. Arnaud doesn’t want her to say anything about him to anyone from now on. He wants her to start thinking about how she can raise the three million she promised him. Josh’s housemistress calls Sally. DCI Hector asks Emily about her relationship with Reuben Maguire (Percelle Ascott). She says it’s sporadically.
Reuben worked in the postroom at JK Wright when she was doing work experience there. They’ve had an on-and-off thing over the years. Emily doesn’t think Jack knew Reuben well. Hector mentions that Jack traveled to Deptford to meet Reuben. Three days later, he got rid of his existing will and had the new one made. Emily says they should ask Reuben. Kat says they will once they find him. Emily insists she wasn’t aware of their meeting. Kat suggests she would’ve shared the money with Reuben who got tired of waiting. Emily refuses to comment. When she leaves, she gets a message from John about Gray being in the hospital. Police begin searching everywhere for Reuben. Sally speaks to Martin Ward (Bo Poraj) about Josh (Samuel Small) smoking weed in his dorm. Martin says the school has a zero tolerance policy on drugs so they have to exclude him. Sally eventually yells at Martin to shut up. She threatens to drown the school and Martin in negative publicity and litigation. Sally leaves with Josh.
Emily goes to the hospital and learns Gray is still unconscious. John suspects that’s good news for her. He is starting to believe Emily is playing them. Emily goes into the room to look at her father. Josh tells Sally there’s a big part of him that could let the money and everything else go. He wishes he could be ordinary. Sally tells him that’s easier to say on this side. She promises they’re going to be okay. Bobby goes to the hospital with Rose who speaks to Gray. DCI Morgan visits Sally at home. She tells him she last saw Arnaud a few weeks ago in Paris. Kat asks about the promised investment. Sally says she was going to invest three million. She isn’t sure whether that’ll be possible now. Josh listens through the door. Morgan and Kat want to know if Arnaud knew about the will change. Sally insists there have been no communications with Arnaud about the will since. She knows he’s a convicted murderer. Morgan asks if there is anything odd in his behavior.
Sally says no. John calls Bella to tell her Gray is starting to come around. Emily gets a message from Kyle who asks her to call or she will regret it. John speaks to Gray about everyone who has visited him. John believes he should’ve helped him before. Gray admits he wouldn’t have helped him. John asks how he can find Eddie. He offers to let Gray stay with him until he’s better. He tells Bella she can stay too. Sally asks Max how bad it is. Max Preston (James Wilby) worries this will get out and a judge will decide that Jack’s decision making was sound. Max says it’s too late to change tactics because it would raise flags for the defense. He says they’ll press on and hope no one finds out. Sally doesn’t remember telling anyone. She says someone knew and others might. Therefore, she’s going to have to tell Josh. When she goes home, she tells Josh the truth. Josh asks if that’s why Jack cut him off. He questions who his father is. Sally believes she knows but she isn’t positive.
Josh is not happy. John asks Gray not to tell Georgia that he paid off Eddie. Bella is starting a new job and doesn’t have time to come down right now. DCI Morgan messages Beth to tell her that Marlon’s 14th birthday is coming up and he might like to hear from her. Georgia tells John it’s been two weeks and Gray has made a good recovery. John isn’t eager to get rid of him though. Georgia wants to go over his written statement. She tells John not to push her. He fires back. Outside, John tells Gray to speak from his heart and he’ll be fine. Gray asks about John who admits the last few weeks have made him think about what’s important. He suggests they’re fighting over money they don’t need. There’s a part of Gray who can’t handle the thought that Jack is still humiliating him. John says Jack humiliated him his entire life. He didn’t want to bake bricks for a living. He wanted to paint and get a fine art degree, but Jack says it was stupid. John told him to stick it at first until his dad wore him down.
John didn’t even apply in the end. Gray tells him he should go back to it. John doesn’t think Georgia would like that. Gray says it doesn’t matter what else anyone thinks. Kyle confronts Emily to ask her what the messages mean. He says they were private and he stole them. Kyle wants to know what they meant even if it’s just to protect her. Emily argues she doesn’t need his help. She tells them that they’re done and that he’s weird. John sets up his easel so he can paint again. Georgia begins looking for him later. Gray tells her he’s in the garage. Georgia finds John creating a mess in the garage. John tells her he’s decided he’s not doing the trial. He’s fine with them just relying on his written evidence. Georgia pleads with him to be there because they need the money. John says they really don’t though. Max coaches Sally through her statement. Laura Johnstone (Rakhee Thakrar) talks to Emily who says she’s the only one who knows. She told Emily when she was pissed one night. Emily is fine with Laura using it in court. She can even help find someone to corroborate it.
Reuben is stopped outside the Phoenix Rising by DC Sam Carver (Lena Kaur) and other officers. Kyle goes to the police station to say he has some information about the Jack Wright case. DCI Morgan looks at the messages Kyle has given him. Kyle says he forwarded them from Emily’s phone. One message says giving her the whole company wouldn’t make up for what he did to her that night. Morgan asks Kyle what that means. He tells Kat he wants to speak to the grandmother again. She says Reuben apparently has a watertight alibi. They interview Reuben who doesn’t want to talk about the messages or the meeting with Jack. Morgan tells him that his mate wasn’t sure he was there the whole night of Jack’s death. Reuben still says nothing. For some reason, they take Reuben to his flat when they search it. They find blood on a bag. Kat calls Morgan to say they also found fragments of burnt clothes. They’re not positive that Emily was in California.
They’re waiting on an appointment for Rose. Morgan doesn’t like where this is going. Georgia finds a note from Gray saying he’s heading back to town. She calls someone to say she really misses them. John overhears her asking if they can ever forgive her. Rose insists she didn’t think Jack was a child abuser. She says Kyle has got it wrong and Emily never mentioned it. Rose says that wasn’t who Jack was. John tells Georgia he’s going to stay with Gray for a few days. She tells him he just needs to man up a bit. Georgia says she’s sorry. John tells her good luck at the trial before leaving. The trial begins. In an interview, Emily says no one really knows what’s going on inside of someone. She admits people were shocked. John questions what sanity means. Sally says she defies anyone to withstand that sort of pressure. She says it was intolerable. Sally believes anyone would’ve snapped.
I, Jack Wright Review
We’re finally getting closer to the finale and very little has been revealed. Up until this point, the series has been nothing but a soap opera with family fighting and family secrets. That’s definitely the case with Josh not being Jack’s son. Again, viewers could watch the first episode and the finale without missing anything.
The series is bloated in pretty much every possible sense making it bland and tedious to get through. The detectives are pretty much incompetent and worthless. In one of the earlier episodes, they were triangulating phones to find out where people were. Why didn’t they go ahead and subpoena everything else on those phones?
Did Kyle really need to bring that information forward? If the series was written competently, this wouldn’t be necessary. It’s also weird that the forensics team actually took Reuben back to his flat to search it. That didn’t make any sense. On the plus side, John’s character has shown real development since the beginning.
A lot of the performances are weaker than they should’ve been, especially from some of the leads. Some of the others are better. Viewers could probably guess how it’s going to end, but the series hasn’t given us enough justification to genuinely care. Eddie Elliot should just go on a rampage and take out Gray’s entire family and save us the headache.
The whole thing is probably going to turn into an unbelievable mess before all is said and done. Bottom line, it really isn’t that good. The fifth episode scores a 5 out of 10. Recaps of I, Jack Wright can be found here. Find out how to support our independent site at this link. Learn more about advertising with us here. Discuss this show at the forum!