"Inspector George Gently" is a crime drama set in the 1960s about an old-school detective trying to come to terms with the proliferation of drugs and the changing face of policing. It premiered on BBC One in April 2007 as a pilot episode called "George Gently", with Gently (Martin Shaw) resolving to find out who killed his wife in a hit-and-run incident. He suspects gangster Joe Webster (Phil Davis) is behind her death and follows him up to Northumberland after discovering he has attended the funeral of a young biker. When people in Webster's gang are killed, Gently discovers he is not the only one seeking vengeance. Along with his headstrong young assistant Detective Sergeant John Bacchus (Lee Ingleby), they embark on a race to find the killer before he strikes again. The pilot was adapted from Alan Hunter's novel Gently Go Man, published in 1961, by Peter Flannery (Our Friends in the North).