'This Definitelyl The End...'

 

- Caren Clark

Incredibly, it’s 50 years since Martin Shaw made his TV debut in an ITV Play of the Week. Later that year he played hippy Robert Croft in Coronation Street before going on to become one of our best-loved actors with memorable roles in the likes of The Professionals and Judge John Deed.

‘I still get people saying, “You’ve been my childhood,”’ Martin, 72, tells TV Times. ‘I was sent a YouTube link to something called Martin Shaw 50 Years on TV. Somebody had edited together clips of everything I’ve done, which was so nice because there was stuff I hadn’t seen.’

As we talk to the friendly star, he is in a reflective mood, perhaps due to the fact that he’s about to leave the longest-running role of his career as TV’s most upstanding detective in crime drama Inspector George Gently, which is ending with two final episodes, set in 1970.

‘I’ve done a lot of TV series, but I’ll miss Gently because he’s the ideal policeman with common sense and a belief that the law is the law,’ says Martin, who wants a special souvenir to mark his decade on the series.

‘On the first day, I got a Ronson lighter that had been engraved, “To George with love from Isabella” [Gently’s murdered wife]. That’s the one thing I want,’ he says.

We’re chatting on set in Gently’s office – complete with a 1970s-style phone, heavy ashtray and a photo of Isabella on his desk – which has been created in a former training college in Durham.