Edit
Storyline
The year is 1966 and the football World Cup has come to England. With the USSR due to play at Roker Park and the fear of the 'Reds Under the Bed' exemplified by the upcoming Polaris submarine landing at the nearby Jarrow docks, tensions are running high. CND protesters, lead by radical students from Durham University, are the last thing the police need when the world media is on their doorstep awaiting the upcoming football match. Gently and Bacchus investigate the murder of a well know Lefty academic, found dead in the docks post a CND rally. This takes them onto the Durham University campus - an ancient temple of learning struggling to come to terms with the novel influx of students from the working class and brash, radical, academics. Sexual and Social rebellion is everywhere in the air and to the young and optimistic these forces seem inevitable and unstoppable. Bacchus is horrified yet fascinated by the promiscuity on display. Gently, a war veteran, more shrewdly recognises that ... Written by
Anonymous
Plot Summary
|
Add Synopsis
Edit
Did You Know?
Quotes
[
Gently and Bacchus are going through the pockets of a murder victim. Bacchus pulls out a ball of tinfoil with some brown lumps inside]
George Gently:
Is that what I think it is?
John Bacchus:
Yes. Cannabis resin. It's a bit late to charge him with possession now, isn't it.
See more »
When a CND rally at the Swan Hunter shipyard turns violent several of the protesters are arrested and one of then complains that he has been assaulted not long after he is released he is found dead in the dock. There are many possible reasons; did he fall in after succumbing to an injury caused by a police truncheon? Was he killed by one of the women he'd ended a relationship with? Was it something to do with his anti-nuclear activities? Or was it something else altogether? As the investigation progresses it touches on many issues of the time including the fear that the bomb may really drop at any minute and the fact that abortion and homosexuality were still both illegal then. These issues are handled sensitively in a way that didn't leave this viewer feeling he had been preached to. The mystery itself was good and while I'd suspected the guilty party fairly early on I was mistaken about his motive.
As with previous episodes the acting was solid from leads Martin Shaw and Lee Ingleby as DCI Gently and DS Bacchus, also notable was Warren Clarke as university porter and ex-SAS war hero Charles Hexton. Away from the main story DS Bacchus's marriage continued to fall apart with his wife asking for a divorce, he must decide whether to agree or force her to wait years till she can get one without his agreement.