Gently does it

MARTIN SHAW asks me to leave.

He wants to use the toilet and I’m in the way as the bathroom of the London hotel is being used as the holding area for those waiting to interview him and co-star Lee Ingleby about the new Inspector George Gently series.

Our previous meeting was in the more picturesque surroundings of Palace Green at Durham Castle, where they were filming the second of the two new BBC1 films.

The difference this time is that the series, created by Our Friends In The North writer Peter Flannery, was filmed where the stories are set in the North-East. Previous stories have been shot in Dublin. A Northern Film and Media cash injection helped persuade the makers to set up base in Durham earlier this year.

The on-screen double act of Shaw and Ingleby, who play Sixties detectives Inspector George Gently and Detective Sergeant John Bacchus, carries over into their off-screen interview.

They joke their way through the conversation, with serious diversions to discuss such issues as shooting schedules, the Durham sights and nights out in Newcastle.

“It’s nice to film where it’s set, isn’t it?” says Ingleby, turning to his co-star.

“It’s brilliant,” agrees Shaw. “It made more of a difference than any of us expected.

And because Durham is so compact, it saved a lot of travelling time.

“When you’re up against it time-wise and as tired as you tend to get – especially me, as I’m a bit older than you – it meant a lot of locations were only ten or 15 minutes away.

“And having Durham Cathedral there is just so beautiful, an amazing place. It’s just a nice place to be.”

Ingleby recalls they had good weather most of the time. “That made a huge difference. Ireland in the winter was wind and snow and rain hailing off the sea,” elaborates Shaw.

They shot for two months and went their own way on nights off. Ingleby took advantage of the Newcastle night life, although reluctant to share details. “It was too much of a schlep for me to come to London every weekend, so I chose to stay over,” he says.

Any nightspots he’d recommend?

“I couldn’t possibly say,” he replies.

“I went to the ballet,” volunteers Shaw.

“That’s the age difference – I went to see Swan Lake”.

“And I went to Flares,” says Ingleby.

The thought of playing a crimefighting duo didn’t cross Shaw’s mind when they began the George Gently series. He quotes Flannery, who calls it more of a whydunit than a whodunit.

“It’s set against the relationship of Gently and Bacchus.

That’s what I hope is interesting.

Alongside that are the crimes we solve together,”

he explains. “But there’s a lot more emphasis on why did people do this? And it’s much more of an explanation of how these two get on and their relationship rather than Batman and Robin or Bodie and Doyle. It’s a different genre altogether.”

Over the years of doing Gently, they’ve built up a rapport. “It was pretty instant, we got along straight away. We have a similar outlook on the work and just had fun,”

says Shaw.

The period setting – the first of the dramas is set in 1966, the year of the World Cup, Harold Wilson winning the General Election and the Moors murderers being convicted – is something of which Shaw has more knowledge than his younger co-star.

“It saves having to make a phone call a lot of the time because I can remember it,” says Shaw about ensuring the period detail is correct.

As well as the element of nostalgia, hindsight enables the makers to tackle issues such as sex, race and homosexuality on which attitudes have altered over the years.

Shaw is in a position to know how TV programmes have changed. I remind him of the taboo-breaking Helen, A Woman Of Today from 1974. “That was a different time in TV drama.

That was 13 one-hour episodes of real grit and honesty that you couldn’t do now,” he says.

“I remember doing a scene in bed with the woman who played Helen, she’s lying there topless and I’m just stroking her while we were talking. There was no sense of isn’t this daring.

This is just what you did. We’ve somehow become more prudish and frightened.

“This was an analysis of a marriage breakdown, a really visceral and dangerous, upsetting thing. And 13 hours of it. Nobody would go for that now.”

Tighter budgets mean shooting schedules have become shorter and shorter. There’s less time and freedom to do things. “You had a writer, director and producer. That’s where it ended in those days. The producer made the decisions.

You didn’t have to go to the executive producer to hand it to the other executive producer to hand it to the next executive producer.

“The higher it goes up the food chain, the further they’re removed from what’s happening.

They won’t even have read it by the time they make the decisions.”

WHEN we meet, he’s in rehearsals for a new stage production of The Country Girl, which toured before moving into the Apollo theatre in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue.

Shaw tries to do a play every two or three years to “touch base with what we do” because in TV you don’t get a chance to really explore the character and go deeply into something. I don’t think he’s moaning, just stating a fact of life.

“Theatre is sustaining it over two-and-a-half hours. It’s like two-and-a-half hours of intense psychiatry. It’s primal screaming eight times a week. It’s a reminder – and it’s always awkward not to sound like a pretentious so and so – that, at its best, acting is very little different from ballet or being a concert pianist or a painter. It’s a full body total experience, giving everything that you’ve got. It’s very easy to forget that when you’re doing telly because that’s demanding in a different way.”

The future of Gently is in the hands of the BBC. Shaw and Ingleby are keen to do more.

“It’s mostly hard work but it’s fun. I would love to do it again. We have found our home, a way of doing it and a team that works very well. It would be good to do more,” says Shaw.

■ Inspector George Gently: Tomorrow, BBC1, 8.30pm