George Gently, Series 3 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

George Gently, Series 3 Blu-ray Movie Review

Old-Fashioned Police Work: No Flash, No Guns, Good Drama

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 8, 2011

Inspector George Gently (or George Gently in the first two series) is a British police show set in the 1960s. It follows the exploits of the titular hero, a seasoned detective chief inspector transplanted from London to the small town environs of northeastern England, where he's paired with a brash young partner, Detective Sergeant John Bacchus. The show is based on the novels of crime author Alan Hunter, whose writing made Gently such a popular character that, at the time of Hunter's death in 2005, he'd published 46 books featuring Inspector Gently.

As per the usual "quality not quantity" approach in British TV, each series of George Gently has between two and four episodes, and each episode is about 90 minutes long. 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. But George Gently airs on the non-commercial BBC, which means it isn't tied to the rhythms of commercial breaks. This opens up the writing and makes the flow of events less predictable.

The pilot episode for George Gently aired in April 2007 and detailed the circumstances of the inspector's relocation to Northumberland, following the death of his wife. A series of at least two episodes has followed each year thereafter. For some reason, U.S. Blu-ray releases started in medias res with Series 3. (Series 1 and 2 were released on DVD in 2008 and 2010, respectively.) Series 1, including the pilot episode, will be released on Blu-ray in January 2012.

"Gently Evil" 4/5

It's 1966. Sergeant Bacchus (Lee Ingleby), who is separated from his wife, Lisa (Melanie Clark Pullen), is drinking morosely at a nightclub bar, contemplating a picture of his young daughter. The club comic (Dave Johns) joins him and comments on the angelic look that all children have at a young age. Then he shows Bacchus a picture of a sweet-looking baby boy. "You?" Bacchus asks. "No", replies the comic. "Adolf Hitler."

Inspector Gently (the unflappable Martin Shaw) has been offering a sympathetic ear to Lisa Bacchus, mostly (one suspects) because it takes his mind off his own still-fresh grief over the loss of his own wife two years earlier. In short order, though, Gently and Bacchus are called to a crime scene in a rooming house, where a woman, Domenica Charlton, has been brutally beaten to death, presumably with the fireplace poker missing from her room. Neighbors report that a revolving door of male visitors had been calling on the victim, and one lodger (who turns out to have lousy eyesight) witnessed a man fleeing the scene with a cut on his face. The assailant was also heard to speak with an accent that wasn't local, possibly Scottish.

Two more details are unusual. Someone covered the victim's face post mortem, and in her purse she carried the birth certificate of her daughter on which she'd crossed out the name of the father and written in "Satan".

Interviews with the victim's family only complicate the picture. Her husband, Alan Charlton (Daniel Casey), is separated and has custody of their daughter, Agnes (Natalie Garner), but Agnes is currently staying with her grandmother, the victim's mother, Mrs. Paige (Ruth McCabe). The latter is a stone-faced battle axe, whose emotions, when told that her daughter has been murdered, are hard to read -- if indeed she has any. Her son, Darren (Shaun Dooley), the victim's brother, is a jumpy fellow, who looks like he's constantly on the verge of either bursting into tears or blurting out a secret. Unfortunately for Gently and Bacchus, interviews with the family produce nothing useful. The victim had a history of psychiatric problems, was in no condition to care for her daughter and had plenty of suspicious "atmosphere" swirling around her, but that's all. A report of a man named Smith (Matthew Zajac), who had his face stitched up in an emergency room the night of the murder, goes nowhere.

Eventually someone confesses, and Bacchus is satisfied, but not Gently. "Too many loose ends", say the veteran detective. With no other option, the confessed perpetrator is booked and everyone moves on. Among other things, Bacchus asks the attractive defense attorney, Sarah Simmons (Neve McIntosh), on a date and gets exactly what he deserves.

Four months later, a two-year-old boy goes missing from a local oceanside camping site. Gently and Bacchus quickly discover that Darren Paige, brother of the murder victim in their former case, is a regular presence in the vicinity -- including the previous year, when another child died at the site under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly, the two detectives find themselves reacquainting themselves with the eccentric Paige/Charlton family, this time from an entirely new perspective.

What makes the Gently stories especially engaging is the degree to which the investigations rely on old-fashioned techniques of interview and inquiry, because the time period precedes the technological advances on which most contemporary police procedurals rely. Forensics are basic, research is done in libraries and file rooms, and witness interviews are recorded by stenographers in long hand. In this world, the most finely calibrated investigative tool available is a committed, deliberate, experienced detective like Gently, even if he isn't Sherlock Holmes. It's simply a matter of knowing people, understanding how the world works and being mature enough not to let your emotions get the better of you (which is where Bacchus usually errs). The best moments in an episode usually involve Gently talking to someone (or watching while Bacchus does), studying them, trying to figure them out, because that's where he makes his breakthroughs.




"Peace and Love" 3.5/5

It's still 1966, and the former Soviet Union is playing in the World Cup. With the Cuban missile crisis fresh in everyone's memory, the Russian presence provokes a variety of reactions, all of them intense. A Polaris submarine has been dispatched to take up residence at the nearby Jarrow docks and "show the flag", while a vocal disarmament movement has taken root at the University of Durham, fed by the melange of revolutionary and personal liberation rhetoric that will come to epitomize the Sixties. One of the movement's most visible leaders is a young firebrand of a professor, Fraser Barratt (Emun Elliott). After being arrested at a demonstration with a group of his students, Barratt turns up dead on the docks. A student, Elizabeth Higgs (Kerrie Hayes), is missing.

As Gently and Bacchus try to reconstruct the dead man's last hours and his network of acquaintances, they receive limited cooperation from his students and university colleagues. This being the Sixties, references to pigs and pork abound, and no discussion is free of ideology. (Come to think of it, that sounds almost like the present.) From Mallory Brown (Sarah Lancashire), the missing student's tutor, they learn that she was bright and promising. From Adrianna Doyle (MyAnna Buring), the girl's roommate, they learn that Elizabeth was one of the dead man's many conquests. The late Mr. Barratt was an ardent believer in the au courant doctrine of "free love" and practiced it whenever possible, including with Adrianna -- a fact she shared with Elizabeth the night Barratt was killed. Adrianna herself advocates free love as passionately as Barratt, a point she presses on Sergeant Bacchus almost as a challenge.

The most helpful source of information on campus is the aging security guard, Charles Hexton (Warren Clarke, who played Dim in A Clockwork Orange). Like Gently, Hexton is a veteran of World War II, and he intimates that he may have retained a link to army intelligence that was activated in connection with the recent anti-Polaris demonstrations. Hexton liked Elizabeth Higgs, because, unlike most Durham students, she came from a poor background and had to work hard to get there. She was also a good-hearted soul who was tutoring a young illiterate dock worker, David Swift (James Atherton), in basic reading and writing. Coincidentally, Swift too has gone missing.

By the time Gently and Bacchus have dug through the many layers of deceit and hidden agendas under which the Barratt murder has been buried, many lives will have been altered. Let's just say that state secrets aren't the only ones people kill for.

If there's any criticism to be made of "Peace & Love", it isn't the writing or the performances, but the production design. I didn't live in northeastern England during the period, but I did live in the U.S., and the era wasn't that bright and shiny. The university exteriors look just fine, because those are real locations and the buildings are old. But the dorm room interiors, and more particularly the clothing, hair and make-up on the students and teachers, look far too contemporary. Both the decor and the personalities of the era were scruffy, but their presentation in "Peace & Love" suggests what an aspiring production designer of today might imagine the Sixties to look like, if he didn't bother to do research. A man as experienced and worldly as Detective Chief Inspector Gently would quickly spot the con, if he weren't obligated to follow the script.

George Gently, Series 3 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

BBC productions on hi-def video have established a high degree of consistency, and George Gently is no exception. 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.) The color palette tends to be muted, consistent with the gray, overcast skies that are typical of the seaside locale; but exceptions are made in "Peace and Love" for the university scenes, where the idea was presumably to suggest the "vividness" of the youth movement with an infusion of stronger color. Black levels are very good, and there are no compression issues.

George Gently, Series 3 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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, which strikes just the right note of controlled urgency, is by Dominik Scherrer, whose TV credits are extensive.

George Gently, Series 3 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than introductory trailers for Acorn Media, Murder on the Orient Express and Garrow's Law, there are no special features.

George Gently, Series 3 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

George Gently is first-rate TV and a prime example of what British television does best with traditional genres: solid writing, complex exploration of character, great acting. I'd rather watch something like Gently than most series on network TV today, which have largely abandoned coherent storytelling in favor of high-concept gimmicks that frequently leave the viewer wondering what actually happened. (Castle, a show I happen to like, is a prime offender in this regard.) Highly recommended.