Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby, Lisa McGrillis, Adrian Bower, Louise Brealey, Emma Cunniffe, Anthony Flanagan, Jim Moir, Nick Sidi, Kris Deedigan, Luke Maddison, Glyn Pritchard, Paul Brennen, Simon Hubbard, Annabel Scholey, Lawrence Neal, Jim Kitson, Shaughan Seymour, William Troughton.

Arguments between friends, especially life long ones, can be the source of much anger and hatred; yet somehow they blow over without much issue or ceremony, a drink and a proper handshake, one without descending into sarcasm and cynicism. It is the ones that don’t blow over, where hatred and jealousy become entwined and unable to be torn apart, that’s when the spectre of murder rears its ugly head and the free flowing nature of Gently Between Friends is disturbed.

Unlike the previous two episodes of the series, Gently Between Friends is one that has that unusual motive in a detective story, the realisation very early on that the police will not get to the bottom of the case at hand because the friendship between the suspects is so unbreakable, that even when a friend dies violently, nothing will shake the lie from their tongue.

Whilst such an event sometimes leaves the viewer with the feeling of deflation in their armchair detective hearts, it is a good piece of story-telling that perhaps only Inspector George Gently can actually achieve, possibly down to its gritty realism of a time when the country was at war with itself and the first stirrings of change that was badly needed in certain areas of the country were taken place.

Unlike Morse for example where change only happened in the world of academia or the superb Shetland where alteration is only bought by the outsider, Inspector George Gently is firmly placed in a world where change was everywhere, in the role of women and the rise of feminist principals, in the way the police were looked upon and in the way that the U.K.’s traditional powerhouses of industry, Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle, Sunderland and Birmingham were slowly being taken apart by successive governments, change was so divisive that, like civil war, it was possible for sides to be chosen and for all the wrong reasons.

Gently Between Friends may have not have been the revolutionary story of the series but it was one that perhaps framed time more honestly than most might like to remember, an episode of disturbing charm.

Ian D. Hall