Lewis - Season 8 (2014)

Not sure they kicked off Entry Wounds that well, really. Lewis has retired but rejoins the team the same day Innocent calls him without telling anyone, thus both Hathaway and Hobson are miffed. Hathaway hasn't resigned after all - not explained  - but has taken the Camino de Santiago then not gone into the final Cathedral - the detective in Lewis would surely want to puzzle this out.

Angela Griffin is the new DS who Hathaway hasn't exactly welcomed, but by the end of The Lions of Nemea they are all sharing pizza together Chez the Lewises. 

The first story involves a farm, a surgeon, animal activists and a shooting in the woods with some ingenuity regarding the origin of the lethal bullets. The second is also ingenious in the way Hathaway works out that a newly discovered Euripides is a fake. The identity of the killer is quite a surprise, from Noel Farragher & Nicholas Hicks-Beach, from an idea by Tahsin Guner. Hathaway has a sort of flirty interest in possible suspect Andrea Lowe.

My acute (and cute) co-pilot informs me that Griffin has been directing episodes of Blue Lights - good for her!

Lewis / Whately writes his capital D funny - the curved bit first, then the straight line.

Lewis - Season 7 (2013)

Down Among the Fearful by Simon Block and Catherine Tregenna. A psychic is murdered who is then discovered not to be a psychic at all. Catherine Steadman, Tuppence Middleton, Stukey, Beatie Edney, Dominic Mafham, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Lesley Vickerage.

The moment when Hathaway thinks  he may have been stabbed in the neck with poison is Fox's finest hour. It really shakes him up, actually, and he starts to think about quitting. Fox was making noises about leaving the series, perhaps partly why he's not in the end much.

The Ramblin' Boy by Lucy Gannon had Fox off in Croatia renovating a school - he is called into play when a missing body at a funeral parlour turns into a drugs investigation. Peter Davidson is good as a nasty character, Lia Williams is off her rocker and annoying, Tom Brooke, Taron Egerton. This is a good one. 

But the 'ah' moment comes when Lewis takes Hobson's hand...

And then there's another 'ah' moment when new DC Babou Cesay reveals his connection to Lewis which we thought we remembered from an earlier episode.

And in the season wrap up Intelligent Design a man released from prison is murdered. Hathaway feels himself responsible for the suicide of a young man and decides to resign. Lewis is thinking of packing it all in as well. I wonder if they left it like that in case it was the end for Whately and Fox? Fox was published in 2012 saying that he and Whately had decided to stop to prevent the series becoming 'a bit samey'.

Stephen Churchett both wrote the story and is the murdered man; Helen Jenkins wrote the screenplay. It links to an older crime. Miranda Raison (also in Spooks and HBO series Warrior) is trying to cure Alzheimer's, Edward Fox is a professor.

The Duchess of Duke Street - Season 2 (1977)

We were delighted to learn that season 2 has another 16 episodes; less delighted that Louisa's long lost brother Martin Shaw turns up for a job and begins to disrupt the entire staff; her mum is also taking the piss, outstaying her welcome at the hotel. Writer Julia Jones.

Then is Jeremy Paul's story, two undergraduates conspire to set up Louisa with their college professor Freddie Jones - he falls for her. Julian Fellowes is one of them!

A chauffeur inherits a fortune - £30,000. Louisa and his employer's nephew try and turn him into a gentleman - we know it isn't going to work. He is Kevin McNally.

In an unusual on location episode, Louisa travels to Charlie's bleak country pile, finds she's uninterested in her own daughter, who's something of a wild one, and that Margaret (Joanna David) is wasting away - turns out anorexia is the culprit but they have no idea what they're dealing with; she dies. Interesting to have this subject matter arising in 1977 - good for them. Maggie Wadey is the writer. Ian Cuthbertson and Liz Smith co-star.

T.P McKenna is a famous actor who seduces maid Holly de Jong (not to be confused with Upstairs Downstairs maid Jacqueline Tong) and Louisa sacks her without reference - the kiss of death. I think actually Merriman was responsible as it was normally his job to take up the actor's evening brandy. After a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with prostitution, a kindly policeman takes her back to the hotel and 'encourages' Louisa to change her mind. John Hawkesworth wrote it.

Inevitably, the war comes. In an excellent later episode, 'Tea and a Wad', also written by Hawkesworth, we journey to Bourgogne (or some English dockyard) where Louisa opens up a disused cafe for the troops. This is all the Major's idea, and he proves useful when Mary discovers a young helper is in fact a deserter. But the main event is that Louisa and Charlie meet up again and she agrees to marry him - let's hope he survives the fucking war! (Most of his contemporaries are dead - he's already being described as 'Grandpa'.) Best scene - she goes to tear a strip out of the Adjutant-General (Edward Underdown) and it turns out to be an old mate!

Then Charlie returns... but has a head wound. 'Shadows', written by Jeremy Paul, concludes with end credits that are completely silent - I think I would have gone with the sad variation of the theme but it's undeniably powerful. Geoffrey Bayldon is the artist. Leaving Louisa very much down in the dumps in 'Where There's a Will' by Julia Jones - it's her dad (John Rapley) who's there to force her to pick herself up. Now all we need to worry about is Spanish flu... 

The remaining episodes deal with Louisa trying to bring Lottie, played by Lalla Ward, into society, a difficult job which starts with a Swiss Finishing School. Louisa has a difficult relationship with the girl, who is nice enough but strong-willed, more at home with the staff than society. The girl ends up wanting to become a singer and find her own way. The musical performances are obviously all shot for real.

The Invite (2025 Olivia Wilde)

One of those 'locked room' films that I'm particularly not keen on, like Abigail's Party and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe. Seth Rogan and Olivia Wilde aren't getting on; their neighbours Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton come over and reveal themselves to be swingers. An adaptation of a film by Cesc Gay The People Upstairs / Sentimental from 2020. We didn't like it at all, reminded me of another film we couldn't watch, Carnage. Not at all funny.

We liked Booksmart but were similarly underwhelmed by Don't Worry Darling.

Lewis - Season 6 (2012)

The Soul of Genius. Rachel Bennette. The one about The Hunting of the Snark. Lewis "I read it last night." "What did you think of it?" "Didn't understand a word." "Maybe that's the point."

Good fun involving brothers' rivalry and the botanical gardens. And the Wednesday Club. Annabel Mullion, Alex Jennings, James Fleet, Mathilda Zeigler. Rather sweet sub-story involving 'Miss Marple' Celia Imrie.

Hathaway gets interested in a woman for ten minutes - great scene where he appears to bow to her and she curtsies back - but sadly it doesn't go anywhere.

Generation of Vipers. Lewis is incensed by muck raking websites and journalists, particularly Daniel Lapaine who's written and acts great as website manager. Plus Toby Stephens, Freddie Fox, Josh O'Connor was in it?? I didn't even notice? Where? Roxanne McKee, Don Warrington.

Fearful Symmetry. Russell Lewis. A babysitter is found dead, posed to look like an art object - one of Lucy Cohu's as it turns out. This happens in 'Arcadia Park'. Then  it turns out character have a shared past through care home 'Box Grove' - is this shades of 'Blenheim Vale' - is Lewis working this out in early draft? I don't know but the story also involves wife-swapping and is good and murky. 

The 'Night Keeper' graphic novel referenced - that Hathaway knows so well - is another divine Russell Lewis invention.

I thought this table was a Clockwork Orange reference, but in fact it's from here:

Allen Jones, 'Hatstand, Table and Chair' which was an influence on the film's design.

The series concludes with Simon Block's The Indelible Stain, early on in which Hathaway asks "Do you have a woman simmering Chez Louis?" There's also a great exchange between he and a bolshie woman suspect when his mobile rings and she says "Wouldn't it be courteous to turn that thing off?" and he replies "I'm at work, not at the theatre". Honestly, some of these people are so up themselves. Professor David Soul is murdered. Nina Sosanya, Patrick Baladi, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Nancy Carroll (as 'Anne Rand'), and David Calder are variously involved.

Lewis - Season 5 (2011)

Murder at college reunion at all-girls St Mathilda, where we've been before in the Endeavour story Zenana (series 7). Then, a fight was going on to keep men out of the college - now they've just been voted in. I thought Russell Lewis might have actually used the same characters, but no. (Though the same house is used, 'Beautiful', from the Pilgrim's Progress.)  Although that is the sort of thing he would do. No, though Lewis (Robbie) has also been here before, failing to solve a case which left a young woman in a coma - he realises they are connected. Its title, Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things is from Wordsworth, 'The Solitary Reaper'.

Juliet Stevenson, Zoe Telford, Stephanie Street, Hattie Morahan and Antonia Campbell-Hughes (known to us from TV's Lead Balloon).

I was marvelling at Hathaway's wall gallery of photos that he's put together from different cameras to establish a timeline, and the fact that all those photos had to be taken in the first place.

Stephen Churchett's Wild Justice involves monks - no, friars - and various murders that are linked to Jacobean (i.e. in the time of King James 1603-1625) revenge stories, the title coming from Francis Bacon - 'Revenge is a kind of wild justice'. The monks - sorry friars - hang out is New College and its Cloisters.

Amelia Bullmore, Ronald Pickup, Sian Phillips. Christopher Timothy, Daniel Ryan, Amanda Ryan (no relation), Sorcha Cusack, Paul Anderson, Nicholas Sidi (creepy friar).

Must make a Cusack family tree photo gallery.

The Mind Has Mountains. Douglas Henshall runs a drug trial when one of the participants is found dead. The culprit is hard to figure out. 

And I'm looking forward to watching The Gift of Promise again, as the intricacies of the plot were somewhat elusive. We spent the whole thing going "Is that Lucy Boynton?" and then not being sure if Lucy Boynton even exists. For cast / more jottings, see here.

There! She does! (I think.)

Lewis - Season 4 (2010)

The Dead of Winter is an interesting episode which Russell Lewis evoked in his later Endeavour film Prey, as we learn that Hathaway's father was the estate manager of a huge property and Hathaway Junior grew up with the children of those distinguished and not. The property is Rousham House and Gardens in Oxfordshire, used in both.

Camilla Arwedson, Pip Carter (the super-efficient butler), Richard Johnson, Nathaniel Parker, Georgia Groome.

One of Russell Lewis's great strengths is to make his stories personal; thus here Hathaway shares tryst with former girlfriend and Lewis has to force him off the case... but the ending - put your heroes in danger. It's one of the best.

Dark Matter, by Stephen Churchett, concerns a death in an observatory and a performance of 'The Planets', and isn't too exciting. Warren Clarke, Robert Hardy (no foolish accents this time), Diana Quick, Annabelle Apsion (Shameless, Call the Midwife).

There's an interesting side story of a man who makes confession to a priest that may help the case, but the priest cannot divulge the sins of the 'penitent' and English Law cannot compel him to do so.

Your Sudden Death Question (great title) is one of Plater's last and isn't as pawky as others, though does evoke And Then There Were None as quiz contestants start to get bumped off in out-of-season college. Alongside this, Hathaway's precious Gibson has been stolen which Innocent eventually realises they have been investigating in parallel (she's smart). Lewis and Hobson would have been going to Glyndeborne had they not been interrupted; they have to settle for fish and chips by the river.

It's nice to see Ruth Gemmell again. Plus Alan Davies, Sally Bretton, Ian Mercer (porter), Nicholas Farrell, Timothy West, Laurence's younger brother Jack Fox (Riviera, Sanditon, Cheaters).

And Russell Lewis rounds off the season with another great episode, a sort of twisted contemporary Grimms tale, which places Holman in the centre of things and has Lewis reluctantly having to suspect her of involvement in the deaths of her friends. But when Laura slips her arm through Robbie's at the end, you know all is well. Rupert Graves is rather good as a drunk artist. With Niamh Cusack. It's set at Halloween and called Falling Darkness. 

We keep noticing good editing. Michael Harrowes, Paul Bond, Jamie McCoan, and Kevin Lester are respectively responsible.

Cromwell (1970 Ken Hughes & scr)

There was an English Civil War and we beheaded our own king. I think that's Big History. And then Cromwell became a kind of dictator without a Parliament. In many ways the most interesting part of the story is what follows - Cromwell's strictly religious Puritan England where celebrations like Christmas and Easter were discouraged, as was the performance of music and plays. Or Cromwell's massacre of innocents in Ireland.

What we're given is an expensive interesting film of most interest I guess seeing Richard Harris scowling and shouting as Cromwell and Alec Guinness being as subtle as ever as Charles.

Those big battle scenes must have cost a fortune and taken ages to film, avoiding English weather these scenes were shot in Spain. Parliament Square was recreated at Shepperton. Geoffrey Unsworth shot it in Panavision with Wilkie Cooper on second unit.

The money shot that opens the picture

Has a good part for Michael Jayston. Also with Dorothy Tutin, Robert Morley, Frank Finlay, Timothy Dalton, Patrick Magee, Charles Gray, Geoffrey Keen.

Can't believe they'd start a battle with "Shall we say, ten o'clock?" "Let's make it nine - I'm starving!" sort of thing.

Composer: Frank Cordell. Editor: Bill Lenny. Production design: John Stoll. Costumes: Nino Novarone. Columbia.

Ken Hughes was a writer-director known for things like Joe MacBeth (1955), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), and The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963), progressed into bigger budget stuff like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Career sank after this.

Breaking and Entering (2006 Anthony Minghella & scr)

Minghella the writer provides enjoyable and original material - thus the prostitute (Vera Farmiga) who ends up sat in the car as partners Jude Law and Martin Freeman are staking out their office; and when the culprit breaks in but Law and Farmiga are too busy talking to notice; or Law following the boy and then employing his mother Juliette Binoche to repair clothes. Whilst this is going on, Law's marriage to Robin Wright Penn is getting severely disrupted by her autistic daughter Poppy Rogers. Rafi Gavron is the young man and Ray Winstone is just right as an understanding copper who in the end knows exactly what deception is going on.

It's beautifully cut by Lisa Gunning, the music by Gabriel Yared and Underworld adds something, Benoit Delhomme shot it. Assistant editor Katie Weiland went on to cut Minghella's No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency as well as episodes of big series like Taboo and Slow Horses.

Alexandra Palace

Lewis - Season 3 (2009)

Allegory of Love. Story: David Pirie; screenplay Steven Churchett.

A woman is murdered with an ornate Islamic mirror and then other literary-referenced killings occur. Art Malik and James Fox are in it. A disturbed young man who is too into his sword and sorcery games is involved.

The Quality of Mercy. Students enacting The Merchant of Venice when one is killed. Daisy Lewis is the strong willed director, Bryan Dick the drop-out. Written with the familiar pawky qualities of Alan Plater, e.g. "Tell us about Edinburgh." "It's a city in Scotland." or "I must get back to Venice." "Have a lovely time."

The killer of Lewis's wife is revealed, causing friction between our dynamic duo - both thinks the other is reserved and hidden.    

The Point of Vanishing isn't just about the 'vanishing point' depicted in Paolo Uccelli's 'The Hunt in the Forest', also surely a good example of widescreen painting:

The film opens and pretty much closes on disabled Ophelia Lovibond swimming and features a strong performance from Jenny Seagrove as a very controlling mother. It's a good, complex screenplay by Paul Rutman.

The season ends on a fairly barmy story involving a group of aged rock musicians who frankly aren't particularly convincing - Counter Culture Blues: they are David Hayman, Anthony Higgins, Trevor Byfield, Hilton McRae and Joanna Lumley, who is back from the dead. Simon Callow is perhaps a shade too camp as the band's producer but Isobel Middleton is good as a music scholar. With Perdita Weeks and Daniel Kaluuya.

Lewis - Season 2 (2008)

And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea (Shelley) by Alan Plater, featuring a crocodile in the River Cherwell! We both would have signed up for Emily Beecham's fictional tour of Oxford immediately!

Also Shelley (The Question):

I DREAM'D that, as I wander'd by the way,
    Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring;
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
    Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring

It's a fantastic film, with a wonderful performance from Tom Riley as the autistic painter.

I think it was Amy McKay who was responsible for all the beautiful artwork.

I must say that the intricacies of Music to Die For by Dusty Hughes, involving the East German Stasi, somewhat eluded me. There's also a romantic triangle involving boxing, South African club owners and Wagner. And Morse resurfaces from beyond the grave. South African (and German) accents largely unconvincing.

Tom Goodman-Hill, Ben Batt, Bradley James, Joanna Christie, Cheryl Campbell again.

Life Born of Fire. Tom MacRae. Rachael Stirling, Deborah Findlay and Ian McNeice are in it.

Is Hathaway gay? Something has happened in the past that he's not letting on. In fact he withholds such important information from Lewis that his boss is really cross. Still saves the young man's life in flaming ending (fire much involved in story).

Liked the way this began with a restaurant, then a close shot of Lewis, that one of Dr. Hobson so at first you think they're out on a date.. then the rest of the detective tea, are revealed.

The Great and the Good by Paul Rutman. A schoolgirl has been drugged and raped but can't remember who did it. Nor can I. With Jason Watkins, Daniele Nardini, Sean McGinley, Beth Goddard.

Little Dorrit (2008 Andrew Davies)

Of course it's Davies - the great adapter (he'd done Bleak House in 2005). But it's Dickens - you'd have to be an idiot to balls it up. (Actually, I say that glibly - I'm sure it's easy to get Dickens wrong.) This is an epic eight hour version, but is zips along just like the serialised version must have done. (There was a similarly starry 6 hour version in 1987, before then a couple of versions from the 1920s).

And what an incredible cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Claire Foy, Tom Courtenay (just brilliant), Judy Parfitt, Eddie Marsan, James Fleet, John Alderton, Bill Patterson, Alun Armstrong, Sue Johnston, Andy Serkis (a performance so vsiceral Q had to stop watching!), Freema Agyeman, Maxine Peake, Russell Tovey, Emma Pierson, Ron Cook, Ruth Jones, Annette Crosbie. But Eve Myles is something of a scene stealer playing a woman who thinks she's only ten. Almost every part is played by someone recognisable like Darren Boyd or Robert Hardy. Also with Amanda Redman and Anton Lesser, Sebastian Armesto (foppish suitor), Alex Wyndham, Georgia King.

It's the usual Dickensian gallery of desolation, poverty, crushing bureaucracy (The Court of Circumlocution is almost Kafkaesque), idiots, well meaners, grafters and murderers. And - people falling in love. He's a genius!

1 - 5 directed by Dearbhla Walsh, 6 - 11 by Adam Smith (notably a director of Chemical Brothers videos) and 12 by Diarmuid Lawrence. James Merifield is the production designer. Music by John Lunn.

My recent thinking on writing long form as like characters as chess pieces and how you move them around the board is very nicely illustrated here. Some times you move a piece you haven't moved for a while, had forgotten about. Sometimes, your pieces can change colour!

The awfulness of Dorrit senior is exposed when he becomes rich and insists everyone change their behaviour and never mention the past, putting it all on poor Amy, who is also lumbered with an overbearing governess in the shape of Pam Ferris.

Ruth Jones is an absolute revelation as the fussy, ditsy ex, but the whole thing rests on Claire Foy's diminutive shoulders, and she carries it admirably in her first major breakthrough.

Lewis - Season 1 (2006)

Russell Lewis wrote the story for the Pilot, fittingly; Stephen Churchett adapted it. It's about a sleep clinic and a troubled young mathematician who will inherit his father's performance car business.

Lewis takes a detour to visit a grave; it's not Morse, as we think, but his wife Val. Lewis is now as lonely as Morse was. In Whom the Gods Would Destroy, by Daniel Boyle, the former DCI has left a typically obscure note that might help with a case involving a former sect of college chums. Anna Massey reprises a role from the earlier series; the chums are Richard Lintern, Adrian Rawlins and wheelchair-bound Richard Dillane. With Anna Madeley.

In Old School Ties Lewis has to act as bodyguard for a former convict now bestselling journalist Owen Teale, encounters former girlfriend Gina McKee. We didn't really understand the motivations of the eventual culprit, so that one didn't work out so well for us. 

But Expiation, by Guy Andrews, is a terrifically twisty tale involving seemingly normal suburban families and a dying don. Emma Croft, James Wilby, Vincent Regan, Lucy Robinson, Josette Simon and John Wood are variously involved.

Rebecca Front is less than impressed with how the case unfurls; Lewis protects 'Jim' from demotion.

Inspector Morse - Season 8 (1995 - 2000) - Endeavour - Pilot (2012 Russell Lewis)

The Way Through the Woods is Russell Lewis's sole contribution to Inspector Morse, and it's a beauty, an adaptation of Dexter's 1992 novel, as Morse believes the confession of a dying man and goes looking for a body - much to the upsetment of Lewis, Strange and former DI on the case played by Malcolm Storry. This is additional to the novel, as is Lewis's suspenseful ending. Chris Fairbank, Michelle Fairley and Neil Dudgeon appear.

A year later in November 1996, another late Dexter adaptation, The Daughters of Cain hit the screens, written by Julian Mitchell and directed by Herbert Wise. I wonder if Dexter was beginning to tire of all the films that had been made from original ideas and wanted to stake his claim again. This is a great story about domestic abuse, with Gabrielle Lloyd, Phyllis Logan and Tony Haygarth as the unspeakable monster. This is all mixed up with the death of a college professor and a missing dagger from the Pitt-Rivers Museum.

Interesting trees

Morse riffs on William Wordsworth: " Bliss was it that dawn to be alive, But to be in bed was very heaven!"

Another year flies by before Dexter's 1996 novel Death Is Now My Neighbour is brought to the screen, again by Julian Mitchell. This is the one where suburban neighbours keep getting shot, and there's a college election competition going on between Roger Allam and John Shrapnel, resided over by the deliciously evil 'Sir Clixy Bream' played with relish by Richard Briers. Wives are Holley Chant, and Maggie Steed, who looks familiar and so she should be - Silent Witness!

In !998 we received Malcolm Bradbury's adaptation of Dexter's 1989 novel, The Wench Is Dead, a delightfully playful Victorian mystery which Morse solves from his hospital bed, aided by girlfriend Judy Loe, author Lisa Eichhorn and graduate DC Matthew Finney (Lewis is absent - he's away at an Inspector's course).

And finally after a two year wait, perhaps for Dexter to finish his final Morse novel the year before, we are brought to The Remorseful Day, adapted by Stephen Churchett. Mitchell did not get his wish to polish off Morse - though he hadn't retired (is now 91). Thaw died two years later.

Whately's delivery of the line 'Inspector Morse is dead!' is a real kicker. As Morse collapses in the college grounds (the way Lewis made Thursday do in Exeunt - the sneaky bugger!) we hear Fauré's Requiem, the same music that was used both in the pilot and the last ever scene of Endeavour.

James Grout as Strange is well to the fore in these last films.

Talking of which, as we had missed the pilot of Endeavour on our last rerun, we did agree to put it on when Morse was over. So we did. It was bloody good just how well Lewis took all the elements of the original and reinterpreted it all so well.

The only one of Dexter's Inspector Morse books that wasn't filmed is 'The Riddle of the Third Mile' (1983). 'The Jewel That Was Ours' was based on the 1987 film The Wolvercote Tongue so I guess he supplied that story to Julian Mitchell then wrote it up as a novel later (in 1991).

Inspector Morse - Season 7 (1993)

Deadly Slumber, by Daniel Boyle. A properly twisty one, this with Brian Cox sympathetic as a millionaire ex-bookie with a braid dead daughter in hospital who he cannot put down. And then the maddest and most far-fetched of the entire series, The Day of the Devil, in which escaped devil worshipper Keith Allen keeps changing his appearance every two minutes without any explanation of who's helping him... Quite fun, though!

With Harriet Walter and some strong women opinion. Daniel Boyle was responsible.

And in Twilight of the Gods, an opera singer is shot. Morse learns not to meet his idols as they are not exalted creative beings but as compromised as the rest of us. John Gielgud is enormous fun to watch. Robert Hardy's Lithuanian  accent is disastrous. Didn't recognise the talented Allan Corduner as the pianist. With Rachel Weisz, Jean Anderson (who we've just seen in the 1979 Lady Vanishes). Julian Mitchell wrote it.

Inspector Morse - Season 6 (1992)

David Haig insists he did not kill fading Oxford Don in Dead on Time (Daniel Boyle).. tuns out he didn't in intriguing tale. Joanna David is the Don's wife and Morse's ex - he does his usual thing of moving in in a most untimely way. Lewis sweetly protects him from the truth. With Samantha Bond, Adrian Dunbar. And in Boyle's Happy Families, evil journalists (portrayed by Rupert Graves and Jamie Forman) are as bad as the killer of another posh entrepreneurial family. Anna Massey is mother to Jonathan Coy and Martin Clunes. A young girl, Charlotte Coleman, is involved, and an acting Superintendent in the guise of Alun Armstrong seems solely concerned about the Press.

The Death of the Self takes us to a suspicious death in Vicenza (and Verona) and Morse just knows that the charlatan 'healer' Michael Kitchen (good) is up to no good, though local copper Georges Corraface seems intent on being unhelpful. Is opera singer Frances Barber involved?

Piazza dei Signori. The statues are the Lion of Saint Mark and Christ the Redeemer

Lewis doesn't even try the local food - idiot! Alma Cullen wrote it. 

And in Absolute Conviction, written by John Brown, there's death in an open prison, run by Diana Quick. (Cells are 'rooms' and prisoners 'guests'.) You'll find Sean Bean and Richard Wilson and Jim Broadbent (as good as ever) inside, with Phil Davies on the outside, plus wives Susannah Hamilton and Sue Johnstone. And a new fledgling detective sergeant is Steven Mackintosh, who Lewis resents, and is thus pleased when he manages to not quite end up the golden boy.

The finale, Cherubim & Seraphim, directed by Danny Boyle, is quite a departure, especially for Julian Mitchell, who in interview sounds a bit Donnish like Dexter himself. Thus the rave scene and Ecstasy like pills must have seemed as foreign as it does to Morse. (There's an interesting conversation about drugs between Morse and Lewis - who confesses to have puffed on a joint - which is nicely echoed between Morse and Thursday in Endeavour: Lazaretto.) And talking of which, Morse reveals a sliver of his unhappy family background, again, to 'Robbie', and thus his lament at the death of his beloved niece - with whom he had Wilfred Owen in common -  which again Lewis R. pounced upon in his later films for Endeavour. Sorcha Cusack is his step-sister.

Jason Isaacs is the foolish drug developer, and there's an amusing turn from a switched on pathologist, played by Bill Wallis. Liza Walker is the confused young lady. The House music now sounds awful!

Inspector Morse - Season 5 (1991)

Second Time Around, by Daniel Boyle opens the season, directed by Adrian Shergold. Oh yeah - the one where Kenneth Colley is another DI who gets involved in the death of a senior policemen... again. Jenny Laird and Oliver Ford Davies may be familiar; Chris Ecclestone is.

The house location is apparently Pope's Farm. Hatfield, though I can't substantiate that; I thought it was the Howard's End house in Nettlebed.

Not sure I enjoyed Fat Chance too much. It features a disturbed woman who goes around ranting at everyone, and a disturbed priest who runs away and may have stolen some documents - I'm not sure we ever find out, do we, in Alma Cullen's religion and weight loss themed story? Maurice Denham, Zoe Wanamaker and Maggie O'Neill feature. But Geoffrey Case's Who Killed Harry Field? is much more like it. Morse, we feel, takes to Harry Field at once (though dead) because he's a drinker and an artist, and he smuggles jokes into the Coats of Arms he's commissioned to create for pretentious Americans (like 'Put the cat out' in Latin). Geraldine James is his wife, Freddie Jones his dad, Ronald Pickup an art expert and Vania Vilers a rich businessman.

Jones with Magritte-inspired portrait

Greeks Bearing Gifts is about the murder of a Greek chef, and triremes. Morse mixes with rich shipping magnate James Faulkner and historian and TV presenter Martin Jarvis and Jan Harvey. A baby is involved in tense ending.

A gem of a series finale comes from Peter Nichols in Promised Land, that land being New South Wales where a grass has gone into witness protection - Morse and Lewis come after him. Rhondda Findleton is his wife, Noah Taylor the son. Lewis befriends copper John Jarratt. It's a real tragedy, this one, and though Morse blames himself, the bad guys were out there first... John Madden directs, and Barrington wrote all the Australian country music we hear!

Thaw wanted the hard-working crew to have a trip Down Under; turned out it was too expensive to ship them out there and they had to use a local crew!

Bollocks of 2026

It's sadly early to start this list (5 January) but unfortunately we have a contender already, Hunting Wives, some crap about a woman who finds herself in the gun packing heart of Texas Republicanism. The title indicates how crap it will be.

Can You Keep a Secret? Dawn French, Mark Heap 'comedy'.

The Lady. True story of Fergie's dresser-turned-murderer. Just wasn't engaging.

The Fortune. Terribly written crap with Eleanor Tomlinson, set in Hartlepool. She inherits from someone she doesn't know and behaves implausibly from the off. Channel 5 bollocks.

Benidorm is Murder. Retired detective John Hannah solves murders. More Channel 5 bollocks. Embarrassing.

Little Disasters. Was put off by the opening seconds, Diane Kruger's look to camera and the portentous voiceover.

Death Valley. Timothy Spall actor turned detective thing. Not exactly bollocks, but life's too short for unfunny guff.

My Brilliant Career. When annoying Australian lead actress goes into a weird dance to modern pop music in 1900 we just through 'eeoo'.

The Undeclared Wat - season 2. Not bollocks, just boring.

Trigger Point. As insane as the last one. A series of bomb defusal scenes with a meaningless and far-fetched plot wrapped around it. Who writes this bollocks? If not for Vicky McClure it's unlikely we would have persevered.

Fargo - Season 4 (2020 Noah Hawley)

A custom has arisen between warring gangs in Kansas City that the sons from each family should be traded to preserve the peace. Ironically, they keep doing it although it doesn't work, as testified by Irish Ben Whishaw having been brought up in an Italian family. Come 1950 and the same thing goes when the Italians trade with the new black gangs trying to make a move. Whishaw seems to be looking after the rival's son well (himself having been in the same position).

The Irish are led by Jason Schwartzman and his younger brother Salvatore Esposito, who muscles in, and the blacks by Chris Rock and Glynn Turman (as 'Doctor Senator') (though Matthew Elam may be the bright one). Loved the left turn of Schwartzman's father seeming to be shot in the neck by kids.

Then we have E'myri Crutchfield, the precocious daughter of morticians Andrew Bird and Anji White, whose sister Karen Aldridge turns up with fellow con Kelsey Asbille.

Jessie Buckley is on brilliant form as a murderous nurse.

Timothy Olyphant is a very religious (and polite) lawman who gets involved. And Jack Huston (grandson of John) is an OCD bent detective who we thought might be an unofficial descendant of Jack Lemmon.

One thing though - we have finally left behind the nice police / family dynamic that was a hallmark of the film and the first three descendants. And for that reason is probably the least entertaining of the series. This is an - admittedly entertaining - power play crime saga, enlivened by the murderous prison escapees characters played by Aldridge and Asbille and by the shenanigans of murderous Buckley, who in a nice twist fails to knock off her boss properly. Also loved the way Schwartzman and Esposito became so close.

And the very ending - Rock's son, who Whishaw has protected throughout, is grown up to be... Bokeem Woodbine from Season 2! (Love the way they do that.)

It has a particularly murky look, which isn't helpful.

That's enough Fargo for now.

Sometimes, Always, Never (2018 Carl Hunter)

Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce (we're in mini-retrospective mode). It's about communication (or lack of).

Who, though, is Hunter? He's mainly known for shorts and was also a producer on Boyce's Grow Your Own - next on the list!

I can't imagine it finding much of an audience without Bill Nighy in the lead. Even so, it's incredible that quirky whimsy like this gets made at all. As such, it's quite successful.

Though it was once seized by customs in 2014, Marmite is not illegal in Canada!