George Gently Series 6 Episode Information

Earlier this year BBC commissioned four new 90-minute episodes of its historical crime drama George Gently, starring Martin Shaw as the titular police inspector in 1968 Northumberland.

Today we're learning a bit more about those episodes, which will comprise the sixth season of the series.

"Gently and [his side-kick] Bacchus return to Durham and Northumberland, my home turf, with plenty more murders and cases to solve," says writer Peter Flannery. "It's 1968 with huge changes in society at that time, and hopefully our series continues to give a real portrait of the age."

In the first episode, "Gently Northern Soul", racial unreset that is sweeping the US reaches the shores of Britain. But in Newcastle, a haven of equality can be found at the Carlton Ballroom all-nighter. All that is destroyed, however, when a young black girl, Dolores Kenny, is murdered, leading Gently to uncover a disturbing and racialist undercurrent growing within the local community.

In "Gently With Class", antipathy for the upper classes' outmoded social graces and their abuse of privilege is growing by the day. Gently and Bacchus experience the inflated authority of their "social betters" first hand, when a beautiful young girl called Ellen Mallam is found dead in the passenger seat of a an upturned car registered to local aristocrats.

Gently and Bacchus are thrown into an emotionally wrought case in "The Lost Child", when a middle class couple's adopted child is kidnapped. It takes them to a Mother and Baby home where young single mothers are forced to give up their babies — where the shame of illegitimacy still burns the cheeks of single mothers.

Finally, Gently's enemies from his London Met days come after him in "Gently in the Cathedral". Gently finds himself suspended from duty — powerless, unprotected and persecuted. He must confront his deepest fears and fight to the death.

The press package indicates the sixth season will premiere on Sunday of Week 34, which, if we're doing our calendar math correctly, would be August 19th, 2012, but this date has not yet been confirmed by BBC.