The Long Call review: A lot of upset and some stunning scenery

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. This new historic tender moment occurs early in ITV’s new prestige mini-series The Long Call, when the troubled Detective Inspector Matthew Venn returns from his father’s funeral and is comforted by his husband Jonathan. The “long call” in the title, by the way, refers to the cry of the herring gull, commonly observed shrieking around the English riviera, but that’s the clearest thing about this over-ambitious drama. Then there’s a suspiciously behaving friend and her overprotective, superstitious yokel father, as well as an entire millenarian religious cult, headed up by veterans Martin Shaw, Anita Dobson and Juliet Stevenson, who give every indication that their idea of a great night out post-lockdown would be a few rounds of Scrabble followed by the ritual slaughter of a goat at midnight on Ilfracombe high street. Stevenson’s character, so buttoned up she looks like she’s fit to burst, also happens to be DI Venn’s unloving old mam, which complicates an already complicated tale with about a dozen plausible suspects.