TV I like: Inspector George Gently - Series 2, Episode 4

Gently Through the Mill

Year: 1964 / Place: Durham County

General election is in a few days’ time, Bacchus is a Conservative, Gently doesn’t declare either way. Within the first 15 minutes of the programme, we see Bacchus having forgotten his wedding anniversary, getting distracted by the dead man’s pretty, dumb, young secretary Julie, and impatient with the mill owner (probably because he’s the Labour candidate standing for election). Upon interviewing the widow, he learns the dead man, Patrick Fuller, used to own the mill up until a year before, but sold it at rock-bottom pricing after the mill’s debts became too much to bear. The company continues to be of interest as Gently learns from Pershore that there were holes in the accounts, sequential money notes totalling 500 pounds mysteriously appearing in the safe the night of Fuller’s death. And then there’s the affair Fuller was having with a married woman, and the suspicion that Draper only got the job as foreman because he may have been blackmailing Fuller. And more sequentially numbered bills are found, right before Draper’s body is recovered. And apparently Fuller was a Freemason which makes things a little tetchy on more than one front. And Gently finally meets Lisa, the Chief Constable’s daughter and Bacchus’s wife. The mill of the title can also be viewed as the wringer Lisa and John’s relationship is in.

Interpersonally, Bacchus exerts pressure on Gently for his approval to take a course in London. Gently doesn’t see any value in it, but Bacchus is full of attitude and really tries it on with him. Gently doesn’t react, just like he doesn’t when Draper mock salutes him with a “Sir, yes sir”. Although they still work the case together, there are definitely unflattering mutterings to be heard underneath the breath.     

A few familiar names from the ‘guest list’: Tim McInnerny plays Rhodesian businessman, owner of the mill & Labour candidate Geoffrey Pershore, Tom Goodman-Hill is the apathetic & unsympathetic foreman Sam Draper, Nicholas Jones is Henry Blythely, the manager of the mill in which the body was found. A familiar face is that of Alan McKenna playing Morris Hilton, but I haven't the foggiest where from.

As far as a season finale goes, this doesn't pack as many punches as some of the previous episodes. The only question that is left open by the time the credits roll is whether Bacchus will return from the course he went over Gently's head to get permission for. It breaks from the pattern of seeing a hanging (and hearing that crack to represent the neck being snapped) to end the programme, which is nice, to say the least - as there was no outright murder in this episode, an execution would not have been punishment appropriate to the crime, and justice is still served. Makes for a pensive ending to a subdued episode. 

Context:

1964 – the choice of Rhodesia as Pershore's former home because Wikipedia tells me it issued Britain a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.