George Gently, Series 1 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.5

George Gently, Series 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

In the Beginning . . .

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 13, 2012

In a quirk of timing, the third series of this terrific British police drama was the first to be released on Blu-ray, but Acorn Media has now circled back to the beginning to pick up the first two seasons (which are already available on DVD). By a happy coincidence, various PBS stations are airing the entire series to date, beginning this month. Check local listings if you want to sample its many pleasures before investing in the Blu-rays, which are another solid effort from Acorn.

British actor Martin Shaw is the series' anchor, and while he may not be famous in America, his authoritative voice and emotional gravitas have made him a star in Britain and the ideal actor to personify Det. Chief Inspector George Gently, the honorable, world-weary London cop who's ready to quit the force when his wife is killed in a hit-and-run that his colleagues treat as an accident—but Gently knows otherwise. It's 1964, and "the Met" (as the London branch of Scotland Yard is known) has become so bureaucratically inept, or just plain corrupt, that Gently can barely stomach the place. Most of the officials there feel the same about Gently, whom they regard as a self-righteous prig. But life hands Gently a kind of second chance in a new position heading the Criminal Investigation Division (or "C.I.D.") in Northumberland in northeast England, where he's paired with a bright but inexperienced sergeant, John Bacchus, whom Gently mentors in doing honest police work the right way.

George Gently is based on the novels of crime author Alan Hunter, who'd published 46 Gently books at his death in 2005. After the series pilot aired on April 8, 2007, a new "series" has followed each year, either two or four episodes per series. The most recent was shown in September 2011, and more have been announced. Each episode is about 90 minutes long, and as I noted in my Series 3 review, the format is reminiscent of the "NBC Mystery Movie" that spawned such diverse fare as Columbo, McMillan & Wife and McCloud, all of which used the longer running time to develop more interesting and elaborate stories than conventional hour dramas allowed. One of the greatest advantages of English series, which have fewer episodes per season, allowing them to be developed over a longer period of time, is that the writing is consistently first-rate.

Pilot: "Gently Go Man" 4.5/5

The pilot opens at the graveside of Isabella Gently (Maria Tecce), where her grief-stricken husband listens stoically while a priest performs a funeral service. His mind keeps flashing back to the night Isabella was run down by a speeding car as they returned home from an evening out. Although the service was supposed to be private, the Met has sent a representative named Corby (Mark Lambert), who offers his condolences. Gently won't even shake his hand. He's certain that Isabella died because of his relentless pursuit of one Joe Webster (Phil Davis), a major underworld figure who's bought off half the Met. He blames himself and the Met equally for her death. "Tell the Commissioner I'll be asking for my pension", he says to Corby. "That should cheer him up."

But an old informant of Gently's, China (Sean McGinley), approaches him with information about Webster. It seems that Webster left London abruptly and hasn't returned. He was spotted at a funeral in Northumberland in the northeast of England for a young man named Billy Lister (Christian Cooke), who died in a suspicious motorcycle accident. The local C.I.D. is already investigating alliances and rivalries within the motorcycle gang into which Lister had just been initiated. The lead investigator on the case is Det. Sergeant John Bacchus (Lee Ingleby).

Since Joe Webster isn't known for attending funerals, much less abandoning his criminal enterprises in London to do so, Gently wants to know what's so special about Billy Lister, and he has himself assigned to the case, claiming it'll be his last. He arrives at the Durham County police station like a bulldozer, pushing aside the current chief, Inspector Setters (Owen Roe), commandeering the troops, including Bacchus, and running the investigation from his hotel, while he figures out who he can and can't trust among the locals.

The Lister murder keeps revealing additional layers. Suspicion first fell on Laurie Elton (Shaun Evans), a fellow gang member, whose girlfriend, Shirley (Suzy Lawlor), appeared to be interested in Billy. But attention soon turns to the head of the gang, Ricky Deeming (Richard Armitage), after his cycling scarf is discovered covered with Billy's blood. Further complications arise from rumors that Lister was gay (a much more serious taboo in 1964 than it would be today) and from Gently's observation that Lister's mother, Valerie, is living far more comfortably than the widow of a merchant seaman should be able to afford.

Meanwhile, Joe Webster makes his presence known through a series of assaults and murders. Given the mess he leaves in his wake, it's no wonder Webster has to buy off cops.

A pilot episode is always tricky, because it has to establish the main characters and their relationships, while at the same time telling a coherent story. On balance, it's more important to get the characters right, even if the story ends up becoming somewhat convoluted, which is what happens in "Gently Go Man". Shaw and Ingleby immediately establish an engaging and multi-layered working partnership as Gently and Bacchus, which creates multiple possibilities for future development, especially since they've already changed each other by the end of the pilot. Gently begins the episode as almost a broken man, and when he first arrives in Northumberland, he has to conceal his despair under a mask of severity that is formidable and off-putting. By the end of the pilot, though, Gently can smile again, because he's made a new friend (of sorts).

As for Bacchus, he's made decent progress up till now on hunches and charm, but no one ever challenged him to be better than he is until Gently came along. Underneath the bravado, Bacchus is ambitious and intelligent but lacking in confidence. Bacchus' new boss may exasperate him, but he's also intrigued, because Gently does the one thing Bacchus can't resist—he takes police work seriously. Discovering misconduct in his own station, Bacchus forces it to stop and draws sneers from a fellow officer: "Catching, isn't it? Sainthood." To which Bacchus replies: "No, man. I'll never be a George Gently. He'd have charged you."


Series 1.1: "The Burning Man" 5/5

Bacchus tracks down Gently at his weekend fishing spot, because the charred remains of a body have been found. So little is left that they can't even identify the victim as male or female without further medical tests, but they can see the bullet wound in the skull, and they've found a ring with an inscription that leads them to Wanda Lane (Pooky Quesnel), proprietress of a local café called The Rook. Wanda is a real piece of work: an attractive but aging temptress who throws herself at every available man entering her establishment (including Gently), then gets angry when she isn't taken seriously.

As if the charred body weren't enough, further confirmation that this is no ordinary murder arrives in the person of one Empton (Hustle's Robert Glenister), a member of Special Branch from London, who tells Gently he's there "on holiday". This being about as convincing as a CIA agent denying there's a CIA, Gently eventually establishes that Empton is looking for an IRA gunman named Ruairi O'Connell, who was reported to be in the vicinity—and with whom Wanda Lane was once involved. Ruairi may have killed the charred victim, or he may be the charred victim. In either case, no one's seen him.

Since it's 1964, the so-called "troubles" in Northern Ireland are still at full boil. A nearby Royal Air Force base is winding down its operations, and on a visit to the base, Gently and Bacchus discover that a cache of rifles has disappeared. The inside man appears to have been a mechanic named O'Shaughnessy (Deka Walmsley), but his daughter, Carmel (Charlotte Riley), has reported him missing. Could he be the incinerated victim, or did he perform the incineration?

Even after a tense stand-off at The Rook and the discovery of several more victims, the entire affair remains opaque, until Sergeant Bacchus notices something. In this, their first major investigation since the young detective acquired a new boss, it's his honor to find the loose thread in the tangled web of lies that's been woven round the whole affair. When Bacchus starts pulling, the unraveling is worthy of the novels of John le Carré.




Series 1.2: "Bomber's Moon" 4.5/5

In 1964, many people in England still vividly recalled World War II, especially the dark days of the German aerial bombardment. So when Gunter Schmeikel (Wolf Kahler), a former Nazi pilot downed over England and held as a P.O.W. near Durham, returns to Northumberland for a visit, reactions are strongly mixed. But Schmeikel underwent a personal conversion during his time in England. He was billeted with a family of pig farmers named Hardyment, and the experience changed his entire outlook on life. After the war, Schmeikel was repatriated to Germany, where he began a successful business based on cooperative principles. Now he's back to thank the Hardyments and share his success. All of which makes it extremely unfortunate when Schmeikel is found at the bottom of the harbor, drowned and with his back broken.

As Gently and Bacchus reconstruct the dead man's final hours, they encounter intense pockets of anti-German sentiment in the local community, including Chick Shavers (Paul Broughton), a former wrestler who just happens to have been the bartender in the pub where Schmeikel spent his last evening, carousing and buying drinks for everyone. But Shavers has an alibi, and there are other oddities about the case, including the lies and generally guilty behavior by the dead man's son, Wilhelm Schmeikel (Christian Oliver), who was seen heading toward the dock around the time his father died, and Wilhelm's wife, Trudi (Nathalie Bolt), whose English conveniently disappears when Gently and Bacchus want to talk to her. Then there's Robert Stratton (Kevin Doyle), an odd fellow who happened to have been parked at the docks that night with his autistic daughter, Alice (Sammy Dobson), as part of a nocturnal bird-watching project. (Only in England, right?) And something strange may have happened at the Hardyment pig farm, where Old Jim and Mabs (Tim Healy and Gillian Hanna) are salt-of-the-earth country folk, but their grandson Jimmy (Kevin Wathen) harbors some sort of resentment about his mother, who committed suicide not long after Gunter Schmeikel returned to Germany in 1945.

As if the case weren't complicated enough, Bacchus is suffering from financial pressures that have prompted him to sell the fancy blue MG sports car that's always been his personal signature. A suspect in the case senses an opportunity and offers the sergeant a bribe, which is just the type of danger his new boss feared for him. Bacchus doesn't exactly say yes, but he doesn't exactly say no either, and he ends up stumbling into the kind of gray area that can irreparably change the course of a policeman's life.

The long-term wounds of war are a rich subject, and "Bomber's Moon" explores it in interesting ways. The episode's resolution is much tidier than life typically allows, but that's one of the comforts of television.

George Gently, Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

With the exception of certain aspects of the pilot, which I'll discuss in a moment, the image for Series 1 of George Gently is consistent with the image for Series 3. The 1080i, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is clean, sharp and detailed, with almost no video noise or interference and no visible aliasing while the image is in motion. (Screencaps are a different matter.) With scenes set in the present, the color palette tends to be muted, consistent with the gray, overcast skies that are typical of the seaside locale; for flashbacks the HD video attempts to simulate, with a fair degree of success, the more intense colors and slightly grainy look of overexposed film. Black levels are very good, and there are no compression issues.

The pilot episode, "Gently Go Man", uses a slightly different palette than every subsequent episode. It's the only episode where the production company seems to have gone out of its way to shoot on fair days with blue skies so that the seaside communities of Northumberland look their best. (In fact, the pilot and first two series of George Gently were filmed in Ireland.) The effect is to contrast the colorful north with the monochromatic miasma of the corrupt city that Gently is leaving behind, and the Blu- ray's ability to deliver vivid but not overly saturated colors is crucial in this regard. The concluding shot of the pilot shows Gently and Bacchus walking along a glorious beach under a vivid blue sky, the likes of which seldom appears again in George Gently. It serves as a kind of "welcome" sign for the grieving detective to his new home.

George Gently, Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with Series 3, the PCM 2.0 track is basic and effective, with emphasis on dialogue and essential effects. There is a general sense of environmental ambiance, but otherwise nothing special from the surrounds and no major work for a subwoofer. The underscoring for the pilot was provided by John Keane and for Series 1 by Ray Harman, both of whom have extensive TV credits.

George Gently, Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interviews: These are text interviews with series stars Martin Shaw and Lee Ingleby and series creator Peter Flannery, which date from the pilot episode. They can still be found on the internet, though not easily, which makes their inclusion here useful.


• Introductory Trailers: At startup, disc 1 plays trailers for Acorn Media, Murdoch Mysteries and Bonekickers. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

George Gently, Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Despite the predictable recurrence of cop shows on U.S. prime time, we don't have anything quite like George Gently. U.S. networks seem to need gimmicks to sell a series, and George Gently doesn't have any. It's a straight-up, old-fashioned procedural that relies on the basic virtues of top-notch scripts, great acting and interesting locations. Even when our networks are handed a solid character-driven property, they don't know how to adapt it, as was demonstrated most recently by NBC's botched attempt to create an American version of Prime Suspect. The English are just better at these things. Highly recommended.