A crime drama set in the 1960s, based on a series of novels by Alan Hunter, concerning the partnership between the veteran title detective and his mouthy younger sidekick, John Bacchus. While in the novels the setting is Norfolk, here the stories take place in the North East of England, mainly around Newcastle upon Tyne and County Durham. The duo track down criminals during their investigations, but Gently must also keep his headstrong assistant focused on the cases at hand and keep him on the straight and narrow, in a time when the line between police work and criminality was much blurrier.