The final series of GEORGE GENTLY - based on the long-running book series by Alan Hunter - takes world-weary Gently (Martin Shaw, MACBETH) into the turbulent 1970s just as he is being pressed to hang up his hat by his superiors. When a body found in a waste tank at an industrial site is identified as the body of a man murdered by his now-imprisoned wife Eve (Anamaria Marinca, 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS), Gently at first suspects that she must have had help to move the body and then, after interviewing her and finding her ignorant of the location of the body, that she might not be the murderer. As Gently, junior investigator John Bacchus (Lee Ingleby, NATURE BOY), and new detective Rachel Coles (Lisa McGrillis) re-interview the witnesses and pore over the evidence, Gently suspects a miscarriage of justice, Coles suspects rampant sexism and intolerance of foreigners skewed the interpretation of the evidence, and Bacchus is as eager to shut down the investigation as his superior are over bad press due to his own conduct in the original investigation. In the final case, Gently makes himself even more unpopular with his colleagues with the successful conviction of a group of corrupt officers. The win, however, makes him the ideal investigator to look into an anonymous tip about the murder of a young woman who was a scab worker in Washington ("County Durham, not D.C.") while Bacchus and Coles investigate the more recent professional-looking hit on another scab worker during a labor and union dispute with the seemingly benevolent help of ascending labor MP Michael Clements (HINTERLAND's Richard Harrington). When Clements turns out to be the link between both crimes and is implicated more personally in the first murder, Gently wonders whether he really has solved two cases simultaneously or if both he and Clements are being set up by higher powers. The final two feature-length episodes of the series are rather a mixed bag. While Gently has spent the entirety of the series trying to mold Bacchus into his own image, the need to resolve this long-running thread within one episode seems to suggest that they really have not made much progress at all within the last decade with confrontational scenes rehashing Bacchus' drinking, his estranged ex-wife, his non-relationship with his young daughter, and his seemingly lackadaisical approach to investigation, in such a manner that it seems less like the creators are interested in resolving their relationship than in sidelining it in favor of Gently mentoring Coles just as she is starting to become active in women's liberation. The ending of the series as a whole seems like a lazy cop-out and is even more unsatisfying if there is no spin-off series.