Monday 1 June 2009

Bomber's Moon


As a follow-up to the new set of episodes of Inspector George Gently, BBC TV have screened a repeat of Bomber’s Moon, which was first shown last year. I missed it then, but caught up with it last night.

In this story, when a Northumberland boatman discovers he’s hooked an eyeball in the water, the police are called, and soon a body is found. This struck me as a rather grisly scene, not conventional Sunday night viewing, but typical of the way in which the Gently shows combine the mundane with the startling. The deceased proves to be a German who had settled in the locality after the war, but almost twenty years after the cessation of hostilities, it seems that some old enmities have yet to be resolved.

The victim’s rather unpleasant son is an early suspect, but the solution proves to have its roots in the past. I thought it rather foreseeable that the dead man’s previous career as a bomber pilot would have a part to play in the story, and this was another example of why the Gently shows tend to be rather frustrating.

Production values are high, and there is much of interest in the 1960s backdrop. But the mysteries tend to be commonplace, and DS Bacchus – in this episode plagued by money troubles – is a constant source of irritation. When I compared him in a recent post to Captain Arthur Hastings, I think I was doing Hercule Poirot’s sidekick a disservice!

5 comments:

David Cranmer said...

I just published a story about a detached eye so I'm intrigued by Bomber's Moon. Hopefully someday they will play it on this side of the pond.

Elizabeth Spann Craig said...

Ugh. I wish I didn't have such a low gross-out threshold, but I do. I think I would have had to tune out after the eyeball thing...

Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder

Pamela Terry and Edward said...

I'll look for these. Hopefully they shall make their way across the pond eventually. We have recently watched teh BBC production of Mankell's, Wallander, with Kenneth Branagh, which we enjoyed very much.

Happy day to you!

Uriah Robinson said...

There are two factors that make this series hard work for me.
Firstly Bacchus is probably the most unbelievable cop there has ever been on TV. In fact he is the most annoying investigator since Lucy Scarpetta.
Secondly I keep remembering Martin Shaw as Doyle in The Professionals and realise how many years have passed.

Martin Edwards said...

Thanks for all these comments.
Uriah, I'm glad you feel as I do about the awful Bacchus.
Pamela - I have to say that the Wallander series was significantly better than Inspector George Gently, even thought IGG does have its positive aspects.