Another superb British police "procedural," with DCI George Bently (Martin Shaw)the eponymic self-effacing righteous cop bent on seeing justice done, not infrequently at the expense of poor or corrupt police work by others. With his less-righteous Detective Sergeant John Bacchus (Lee Ingleby), the pair play very well off of each other amid England's north end in the Newcastle and Durham areas -- great accents! -- where Gently moved after being fed up with corruption he saw at London Met... a storyline woven in and out throughout the series. Few are the episodes merely "catch the killer"; there usually is one or another social issue involved; as said, Gently is a moral cop.

Each episode of this crime series is far too long for the content within it. Some of the stories in this show are good, but the pace is painfully slow. The protagonist's droning voice is off-putting and he's not particularly likable either.

I originally loved the series for the subjects it raised and how it went about it, though it could be a bit stuffy and judgemental at times.I went off it completely when I realised that George Gently had become a hypocrite.Spoiler of sorts.In one episode he jails a police chief for the unfortunate outcome of actions he took to protect his disabled son, yet in a later episode, he happily uses an illegal firearm to protect himself from gangsters and corrupt police.That was the last one I saw, as I lost any desire to see him judge people for behaviour he would ignore in himself.

Inspector George Gently is a clever, astute cop but he spends less time fighting crime in bleak Durham County in the north of England than battling racism, sexism, corruption and general narrow- mindedness, much of which is to be found within the police department! When the coppers aren't taking a "backhander" (a bribe), they're busy harassing or beating up some hapless Arab, Black or Paki. Set in the year 1964, these rambling, overlong episodes reveal such a profoundly anti- police attitude that, as one reviewer noted of the American film **Serpico**, you have to wonder why the title character went into police work at all.On the plus side, Inspector Gently is well played by sixty-something Martin Shaw as the veteran detective who has seen too much and experienced personal tragedy. He and young Detective Sergeant Bacchus, who married the boss' daughter and feels guilty about it, make a well-balanced team with the younger man properly in awe of his superior's integrity, wisdom and powers of observation.