George Gently

I have written about the first episode of the George Gently new series recently, an episode which engaged and was well constructed. Last night I looked forward to viewing the subsequent episode on the BBCi player and was disappointed at the time although on the reflection this was not justified. The subject was well worn, the ability of the aristocracy and those with power to protect themselves. In this instance it was Northumbrian aristos where the Lady of the manor insisted on being addressed as her Ladyship but was an over protective slut prepared to do anything to protect her son and the family good name. She demonstrated contempt for everyone else including her husband and the dead young woman who had drowned in one of the eight or was it nine cars on the estate and used by those who worked there with keys left in the ignition. The car had gone off the road and the girl had been trapped by a leg unable to get out of the vehicle as the water rose. The main plot issue concerned who had been in the car with the girl and then walked away.

However from my viewpoint the issue was the behaviour of the Sergeant who spouted all the anti aristo prejudices of the post war period, in this instance with justification as twice before he had arrested the son for drunk driving and the case had never got to court because of the influence of the family with the authorities. In this instance an assistant Chief Constable intervened insisting on being in attendance while the son with his mother was interviewed and refusing to allow the Sergeant to participate in the questioning. However the Sergeant later placed a smear of the special blood type of the young man on the vehicle which led to the death of the girl in order to get justice. He was wrong of course both in his actions and in the facts although at first the son appeared the prime suspect because of nasty knock on his forehead.

The anti aristos theme was reinforced by the father of the dead girl who has a job on the estate after losing his job as a pitman and who was full of invective with a background of supporting Eileen Wilkinson and the Jarrow march the one time pride of Jarrow but where local politicians have worked hard to bring the community into the contemporary world in terms of jobs and living standards. There is a great work of art about the march outside the large supermarket although I suspect the nasty smell from the local chemical works still affects residents from time to time as it did when I lived there for a short period after arriving on Tyneside.

The dead girl sang folk protest songs and played the violin, now lived in London where it emerged she had a new boyfriend thus eliminating the young man of the house and another young man on the estate who was being groomed for political stardoom in the Tory Party through a liaison with her ladyship. The girl was left of the left and it when the writer attempts to enter the world of the revolutionaries and politicos that scripts never ring quite true although they come close.

And the truth in this instance? First the son of the house is gay and the product of mother’s tendency to take her pleasure where it can be found. She smothered and controlled the boy who had been persuaded to go to London with the girl to break free from the woman leading to the row after he had said he would drive her in his own car. When her Ladyship stopped the boy leaving it was his Lordship who had followed to drive the girl to catch a coach and they had stopped to talk and he had discovered that he had never recovered from the loss of his first wife, having little in common with his second other than protecting the family interest. He had the driven too fast and after the accident but he had held her hand when unable to free the girl until she drowned. There was a lot more of twists and red herrings and although the Lordship ended in a police cell and son died committing suicide and Sergeant got a reprimand I still feel that the episode failed to measure up and remained a fabrication rather than an honest portrayal of the people and their predicaments.

There was one great truth which came from the lines of Martin Shaw who told the Sergeant with all the benefits of hindsight that the Aristocrats would not longer directly exert the power they once had but they would equip a new generation to carry forward their values. Even in this respect I believe things have not changed to the extent suggested. I had one experience of assessing an application for a grant where it was arranged for me to meet the Committee at a country hotel and where while I waited there was great excitement expressed by hotel staff about who was at the meeting. It was a member of one of the great families of England, someone in tune with the times a million miles from the image presented in the programme; it was the people who maintained the sense of awe, respect and deference. It is the curious aspect about the old and the new English, more than the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh, I believe, which is demonstrated by the support not just for the Queen and her Jubilee, or the patriotic flag waving at the Olympic and Paralympic games but by the resistance to abolishing the House of Lords as we now know it, or renaming the Order of the British Empire something else. If this happens such as the Order of Excellence as proposed by one Commons Committee then the issue of Precedence involved will have to be tackled including the use of Sir and Lady etc. I do not expect to see fundamental change during my lifetime.