The last time we saw Gently and his partner Bacchus (Lee Ingleby) they had been shot and left for dead. The fact that this oh-so-solid crime drama is back for a new series means that they both survived (c’mon, that really isn’t too much of spoiler).
We pick up the action in 1969, just as the Summer Of Love is coming to an end and there’s social change on the horizon. Not only that but Bacchus has gone from Northern Soul-dancing Mod to gruff, side-burned bit of rough. Yikes!
We sat down with Martin – who’s no stranger to our screens thanks to hit shows like The Professionals – and Lee over sushi (get us) to discuss the new series, guest star Pixie Lott and what it was like to be a hippie.
Neither of you are looking too bad for two people have been shot (at the end of the last series George and Bacchus were left for dead). Bacchus seems to be finding things tough coming back to work, though…
Lee Ingleby: I had to do a little bit of research actually. It was more to do with the wound itself – I wanted to know how it would affect him and his recuperation. Then there’s the psychological effect. It’s very easy in a drama to move on quickly and think that everything’s hunk dory. They both thought that they were going to meet their maker, and both of them react in different ways. For me, it was nice to see someone who you thought would shrug that incident off having trouble dealing with things.
Martin Shaw: I think we handled that very well, because it’s always infuriated me when you see someone shot on television or on film and half an hour later they’re bandaged up and behaving normally. A gunshot wound is incredibly traumatic and debilitating.
Lee Ingleby: You think you’re untouchable, but something like that makes you realise that you’re not very quickly.
The series is set in the 1960s – and this new series towards the end of the 60s. What was that decade like for you?
Martin Shaw: It was joyous. I didn’t go to drama school straight away, I worked in an office in Birmingham for a couple of years and was doing semi-professional improvisational theatre. All I knew of acting at that point was the beautiful pronunciation and booming voices of the older generation of Shakespeare (I used to go to the RSC every weekend in Stratford). I had no concept of what the new style of acting was. I thought acting was about speaking beautifully and having a nice costume. When I came to London to attend LAMDA, I just had no idea. At the end of that first year in London something clicked and I learnt new things about acting. This plugged into the whole mood of the 60s because we challenged everything. The 60s was about repairing ourselves from the war and about change and to do new, different stuff. All the protest songs… people had a real voice.
Did you dress up in all the hippie clothes?
Martin Shaw: Absolutely! I had the long hair, the kaftan, the Viva Zapata moustache… I had the lot!
What about the show, did you not want George and Bacchus to go down the hippie route?
Lee Ingleby: I think it’d be easy to say, right, it’s 1969, the summer of love, let’s have Bacchus come in all dressed up as a hippie. But he’s a working man, and the show is more about the attitudes about working people.
Martin Shaw: In a lot of areas it’s Gently who’s the liberal one, and Bacchus is the one saying, ‘nah man, you cannae do that!’ If we have a new series I hope we incorporate the moon landings. That was such an earth-shaking moment for everyone!
But Lee, Bacchus has always been a Mod!
Lee Ingleby: You’re right. But in this series he’s a little bit more gritty and his hair’s longer. We actually get letters from people saying, ‘his hair’s too short’ or ‘his hair’s too long!’
Lee, when you found out you’d be working with Martin, who’s a bit of a ledge, were you nervous?
Lee Ingleby: I wasn’t so much nervous. It wasn’t like ‘Oh my God I’m working with this particular actor’. It was more to do with wanting it to work. I never really get star-struck and we found that we settled into working with each other very well. Right from day one. I remember on the first day we’d done a scene where these two characters were getting to know each other, and it was on these steps in Dublin. We had to walk up them over and over again. We were very fit by the end of it! But we straightaway we had these little ideas on how to make things work. We just threw them in there.
There are some great guests in this series. We hear Pixie Lott makes an appearance…
Lee Ingleby: It was funny really because we actually didn’t do any scenes with her.
Martin Shaw: She’s already dead by the time we come on the scene! Everything is in flashback, so we got to meet her only as a corpse face down in the sand.
Lee Ingleby: We obviously did get to meet her though. If she was nervous she didn’t show it, she was just really knowledgable and wanted to learn so much. She was like a sponge.
Martin Shaw: She was so lovely, too. It was interesting to me to observe her world. I don’t like people taking photos with camera phones or anything like that, but to see her hunted by paparazzi when she was trying to film on the beach was incredible. That was her world – we did our best to shield her but it was a whole different to me. Seeing her perform was brilliant and she lifted the whole thing to another level. She’s a great singer.
Inspector George Gently: Thurs 6 Feb, 8.30pm, BBC1