The villain of the piece – one of them, at any rate – is the sinister church elder played by Martin Shaw. I wrote last week that Shetland had a bit too much going on, plot-wise, and The Long Call also featured plenty of suspects but laid them before us with an elegant simplicity. The crime: a body has been washed up on the beach. But Venn (Ben Aldridge) has a pretty good backstory: he grew up in an evangelical sect not unlike the Plymouth Brethren, his mother is still in it (played by a hatchet-faced Juliet Stevenson) and he’s back in Devon to confront his past. Now, there are some shows in which you’d gladly get through to the end without hearing a word about the detective’s personal circumstances. The Long Call is based on the novel by Ann Cleeves, creator of Vera, who also has Shetland on BBC One. It’s groundbreaking in its way, and feels a good deal more honest than the police dramas that chuck in lesbian affairs as a bit of window-dressing (Vigil, I’m looking at you). If you missed all the pre-publicity, this is the headline news: The Long Call is the first TV detective drama with a gay male lead. Now here’s his husband, in his boxers, and they share a kiss. I’m not sure what this adds to the characterisation, but they’re a perfectly nice pair so let’s allow it. The first time we see DI Matthew Venn in The Long Call (ITV), he’s in his pants.
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