The Long Call, episode 1 review: who cares whodunit when things are this stylish

The first time we see DI Matthew Venn in The Long Call (ITV), he’s in his pants. I’m not sure what this adds to the characterisation, but they’re a perfectly nice pair so let’s allow it. Now here’s his husband, in his boxers, and they share a kiss. If you missed all the pre-publicity, this is the headline news: The Long Call is the first TV detective drama with a gay male lead. It’s groundbreaking in its way, and feels a good deal more honest than the police dramas that chuck in lesbian affairs as a bit of window-dressing (Vigil, I’m looking at you).

The Long Call is based on the novel by Ann Cleeves, creator of Vera, who also has Shetland on BBC One. Really, she deserves her own channel. Now, there are some shows in which you’d gladly get through to the end without hearing a word about the detective’s personal circumstances. But Venn (Ben Aldridge) has a pretty good backstory: he grew up in an evangelical sect not unlike the Plymouth Brethren, his mother is still in it (played by a hatchet-faced Juliet Stevenson) and he’s back in Devon to confront his past.

The crime: a body has been washed up on the beach. I wrote last week that Shetland had a bit too much going on, plot-wise, and The Long Call also featured plenty of suspects but laid them before us with an elegant simplicity.

The villain of the piece – one of them, at any rate – is the sinister church elder played by Martin Shaw. Anita Dobson was mentioned in the pre-title credits and when the episode finished I wondered why she hadn’t appeared, only to realise later that she plays Shaw’s wife. She looked unrecognisable, but perhaps that’s because in my mind she’ll always be Angie Watts. As for Aldridge, it was a steady performance but he does have a tendency to garble his lines. And Venn’s backstory has to make up for the fact that he has no discernible personality.

The story is ticking along nicely (and continues all week), but I couldn’t help being distracted by the look of the thing. It’s like watching a long Habitat advert with a murder thrown in. Never mind the gay kiss, how long did it take Venn and his husband to decorate their house so perfectly? Even the police station looks like a double-page spread in the John Lewis catalogue.

There was a horrible ending to episode one, though: a girl, seemingly an abduction victim, making a terrified 999 call. It was an abrupt switch of tone and a shame, because until that point The Long Call had been doing things with style.