The Gentle Touch

Before there was detective inspector Jane Tension there was detective inspector Maggie Forbes the first female police detective seven years later prime suspect would debut.

The Gentle Touch has been all but forgotten in the ephemeral world of television, despite being a serious ratings grabber in its day, a Friday night essential with one of the best theme tunes ever to grace a television series. Yet far from being another straightforward cops and robbers series with a leading lady to make it different, The Gentle Touch was an altogether more complex animal. Occasionally banal, often disturbing and frequently brilliant, this was one of the last great examples of television that was controlled by the scripts. Jill Gascoine made a strong central figure, with a perfect mix of feminine allure and compassion, but a convincingly tough manner that she pulled off far more successfully than most. There were no scenes of her effortlessly arresting six foot thugs...this was the real world, where women police officers are treated with as much derision as males. One of the real bonuses was the casting of William Marlowe as Maggie's boss, Bill Russell. Marlowe's fabulous performance is every inch the seen-it-all, fast talking, unromantic and jaded police officer, and the ensemble playing of the other regulars is a delight. Derek Thompson is a good deal more animated here than he was to be in Casualty, and Brian Gwaspari's repulsive Bob Croft showed a mix of sexism, racism and homophobia that gradually became tempered by a respect for Maggie and a few hard learnt lessons.

All this is second fiddle to the main thrust of The Gentle Touch, which is that a good few years before the Bill was doing "issue of the week" storylines, Maggie's team were regularly wandering into Play For Today scenarios of occasionally shocking bleakness, where there were often no true villains and victims, with everyone a mixture of both. Fine examples include P.J. Hammond's brilliant "Damage", with a tremendous performance by Robert Longden as a manic depressive abandoned by his wife to bring up his child alone and the victim of a neighbourhood hate campaign. Hammond's "Solution" was equally affecting, dealing with euthanasia. "Gifts" was a simple and effective reversal of the usual expectations of the crime drama, whilst "Doubt" has to be Jill Gascoine's finest performance, a chilling tale of Maggie suddenly falling foul to a mugging and wondering if she can really cope with 80s Britain from a policewoman's point of view. She delivers a superb monologue to her son Steve (a nice turn by Nigel Rathbone) that is almost a summary of The Gentle Touch's attitudes to law and order. This is 1980, punks and skinheads are becoming a recognised threat in Britain, race riots are making the news. Does anyone appreciate the job they do any more? "Blade" dealt bravely with homosexuality, whilst "Scapegoat" was an extraordinarily daring examination of anti-semitism.

Definitely a contender for finest episode is "Pressures" with William Marlowe pushing tension to the limits in his rivetting performance, as Russell suffers the early stages of a nervous breakdown. A particularly moving ending leaves quite an impression.

The Gentle Touch did have its down side, especially a rather shoddy final season with less agitation in the scripts and some very hit and miss plots, with the exception of the tense supernatural episode "Cure". The final episode ended proceedings with a whimper rather than a bang. For those who remember it however, The Gentle Touch was marvellous television, the Seven Dials setting perfectly captured in the sensual, dark theme music, and sense of compassion and suffering expertly depicted in the writing and acting.

I reviewed this series a month ago but have now managed to watch all 56 episodes of the series.

I have not too much to add to my previous comments. The series is better than I remember it being.

It was made in 1980-1985 but I remember a lot of the episodes although I don't think it has been repeated much.

As I said previously people go on about The Sweeney and Prime Suspect but this series was regarded as being tough and realistic when first shown and it tries to be but sometimes fails.

This series was based on the idea of a policewomen in a senior position. American tv had had Policewomen with Angie Dickinson,6 years after The Gentle Touch people got excited about Prime Suspect but it never seemed that realistic to me.

But as much as I am praising The Gentle Touch it had run out of steam by the last series. There were some good episodes in all the series but there were some really silly ones as well.

If you look at the wikipedia entry for this series please don't believe the statement there that this series was the product of conservative government propaganda.

It is true that some of the episodes focus on changing society and the challenge faced by the police. I was 20 in 1980 and politics apart society was changing a lot in the 1980s,wanting a more stable law respecting society does not make some a conservative. Indeed there are several episodes where characters talk about the problems of mass unemployment and racism and sexism.

Simon from London summed it up well in his 2000 review...

The first series' theme song sounded like the opening to 'A Touch Of Frost' and the second series intro theme sounded like 'The Sweeney'! From the third series on, they settled for scene intros.

As popular as this was back in the early eighties, the evolution of TV has exposed its flaws. Jill Gascoine frequently drifts in and out of a terrible cockney accent, the 'crim-speak' ("E's got a shooter, guv?") is straight out of a comic book and the dramatic dialog is very wordy and borders on pretentious and preachy... but back then we were easily fooled and it's unfair to base a very old drama based on precepts and expectations of today.

There's a lot of nostalgic value to be had by watching the re-runs. Britain was going through a seismic social and cultural update and many episodes reflect these changes well. The interesting thing about this series (which probably kept it afloat long past it's 'sell-by date') was the diversity of the topics it covered. Although the central players remained the same, the 'song' didn't. Each week would toss out a surprise of its own.

William Marlowe and the other actors were a treat to watch, as they managed to play it straight-faced despite some bizarre lines they had to mete out.

Interestingly, the BBC came out with an almost identical police procedural featuring a lead woman detective which ran for the same amount of time: Juliet Bravo. The BBC version had a better theme song, better graphics and even better guest actors... Inspector Jean Darblay, though, was a business-like copper rather than the flawed and much more interesting Det. Insp. Maggie Forbes.

Nonetheless, it was still the same dreary and depressing view of the 1980s! There's not much to choose between the two. Check them out on YouTube!

The previous review of this show by "Simon from London", (itself now nearly a decade ago!) pretty much sums up all that needs to be said about this fine series, so all I will add is please release it on DVD - the whole thing! No question there are enough of us out here who remember this superb quality show, made when quality was still a relevant word. Forget "Cagney & Lacey" which came out in the US around the time that the "Gentle Touch" ended, this show had it all. Gritty stories, well acted that kept you hooked in right to the end. I recently purchased the entire 18 disc box set of "The Sweeney" and could think of no better companion piece than a similar set of "The Gentle Touch"