schell-7 Review of Inspector George Gently

Inspector George Gently (2007–2017)

As good as it gets -- for viewers who normally prefer Shakespeare to TV drama

[10/10 · 12 December 2015]

I've just finished Series 6 (2014), after thinking each prior season couldn't be topped. "Blue for Bluebird" cuts so deeply in a viewer's psyche, that anyone who is a child of a parent or parent of a child can't afford to pass it up. I'm at once John Bacchus' Cordelia to Gently's Lear and Bachus's Lear toward his own Cordelia. I'm done with all American series--NCIS, Law and Order, Bones, Criminal Minds--all of it pretentious, exploitive, escapist. The formulas soon becoming numbing--people viewing screens (that never require rebooting); scenes always ending with the central character rushing off (as if he had more important things to do); ghoulish fixation on dead bodies and body parts; hot babes and cool hunks for the groupies; repetitious lightweight musical scores. But "George Gently" rises above even its British rivals--Hustle, Morse, Endeavor. It's the importance of every detail, the willingness to have everything in place for a microsecond shot of ordinary citizens in their harsh environments; the characters of Gently and Bacchus and their relationship over time (we witness it through physical as well as emotional changes). Initially Inglespy is an overachieving kid who seems in over his head; Martin Shaw is a placid, stone-like, solid investigator. By the time of the last episode of Season 6 (a masterpiece of writing), Shaw has emerged as a actor of unsurpassed believability, the heart and soul of a production that rarely veers from its driving theme and purpose: the dissection of the thin line that separates love from hate, evil and irremediable pain and suffering. This series would be unthinkable on the big American networks (even PBS). I couldn't recommend it more highly-- from production values, to casting and acting, to the edification of the viewer's mind and soul.