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. Rupert Graves is rather good as a drunk. 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 string 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!

Inspector Morse - Season 4 (1990)

Dr Russell's gone - no word of explanation. The Infernal Serpent, an original by Alma Cullen, is one of the best. Great to see Geoffrey Palmer as sinister - only wish we'd seen the look on his smug face when his head was bashed in. He's the head of a (very) messed up (extended) family comprising Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Cheryl Campbell, Irene Richard and George Costigan. With Tom Wilkinson, Pearce Quigley (Cutting It, Grow Your Own). Whilst Morse gets to the bottom of the family secrets, he doesn't manage to resolve the University being mixed up with a chemicals company, resulting in the death of a much-respected Professor (David Neal).  John Madden directed - not his first at all. That would be a TV play. The Pigman's Protege in 1982, then Poppyland in 1985. Frederic Raphael's 5 episode After the War came in 1989.

The Sins of the Father, another original by Jeremy Burnham, is about a long-established brewery and the murders that (keep) occurring thence. And it's a sneaky tale with old historical roots that I think would have pleased Dexter. The Sins of the Son would be a more accurate title. Features another of those hideous posh families headed by Isabel Dean (a TV stalwart from 1948) and Lionel Jefferies, Paul Shelley, Kim Thomson (another big-haired Morse woman) and Lisa Harrow. Plus young Alex Jennings and his mother, Betty Marsden (another TV stalwart).

Victor / Jennings (to Morse): "When I come out, I'll get you too."
Lewis: "I shouldn't worry about it, sir. By the time he comes out you'll be long gone."
Morse: "You're wasted as a copper, Lewis. You should have joined the diplomatic service."

Lewis is (inadvertently) 'a genius' again, and solves the final riddle.

Driven to Distraction, by Anthony Minghella, is great fun, as Morse persecutes the wrong guy, Patrick Malahide. Mary Jo Randle has joined the team, temporarily. Lewis puts his foot down and will not search premises illegally without a warrant - good for him. And in a fabulous season finale, Masonic Mysteries by Julian Mitchell, Morse is tormented by a 'dead' evil genius, Ian McDiarmid. Never mind about the danger to life - he loses his precious record collection that was twenty years in the making!

The Cole Porter songs are as usual Barrington's artful recreations.

Danny Boyle directed.

Inspector Morse - Season 3 (1989)

Not their flagship Christmas Day broadcast this time - fans had to wait till January 4. (ITV instead went for a seasonal special of London's Burning! BBC premiered Silverado. Huh.)

Dexter is now writing story outlines. Julian Mitchell wrote this again. Ghost in the Machine pits Morse against the aristocracy in the shape of Patricia Hodge. It's quite a straightforward one, this - comparatively - as we've a smaller cast of characters to play chess with. Her husband's found dead. Suspects are: the gardener (Michael Thomas), the housekeeper (Patsy Byrne), the au pair (Irina Brook), the au pair's boyfriend (John Elmes) and a little girl (Rainbow Dench, no relation). We can probably discount the little girl. Lewis is disappointed the massive country pile has no butler. Various college types are put out by it all. (Didn't recognise John Cater as a Dean.) Claire Skinner's in it for two seconds.

Max has suffered a minor stroke so we're treated to a new no-nonsense pathologist, Dr Grayling Russell, played by Amanda Hillwood. She's reluctant to divulge her first name - so's Morse.

It's only Wrotham Park again! (Last seen in Terminus.)

We're solidly back amongst the academics in The Last Enemy. Peter Buckman wrote it. A dismembered corpse is found in the river and it links to various college types, including Barry Foster.

Plagiarism and old-fashioned revenge play their parts.

"You really like him, don't you?" Russell asks Lewis. He doesn't really answer the question other than to reply "He's the best there is!"

"How do you know I'm a nice girl?"

She's also understandably annoyed when Morse keeps referring to her as "My dear".

The Grump manages to get a couple of dates - an especially funny one to a Jamaican restaurant complete with dub reggae... which I'm sure he just loved.

Anthony Minghella again wrote Deceived by Flight, the cricket one. Old friend, the briefly appearing Daniel Massey, is murdered. Did radio presenter wife Sharon Maughan do it? (I'm asking myself, actually - I can't remember already.) Lewis gets to meet another old friend of 'Pagan', Norman Rodway. With Nicky Henson, Jane Booker, Bryan Pringle, Nathaniel Parker and an unspeakable radio manager Stephen Moore.

And Alma Cullen's The Secret of Bay 5 - man found murdered in his car. Directed by Jim Goddard.

Inspector Morse - Season 2 (1987-8)

The Wolvercote Tongue. Adapted by Julian Mitchell. Originally broadcast on Christmas Day (opposite Marple on BBC1) - prime time Christmas Day. What did the public like about Morse? Well, he's John Thaw, so that's a big plus. The cases may be a bit cerebral but there's Lewis to counteract with common sense and wit. Morse is a maverick - when's he warned off doing something he usually does it - we always like that - and drinks too much - ditto. He may be bad tempered but he gets the job done... and is a bit of a failed romantic. I think that'll do it.

 A priceless artefact is stolen from an American tourist's Randolph Hotel room, and she is dead. Roberta Taylor is the heavy-drinking, long suffering tour guide, Simon Callow her ex-lover and museum curator and Kenneth Cranham a professorial colleague. Then Callow's naked body is found in the river.

Lewis is also on nights so he doesn't have to get involved in decorating at home - spends the entire episode yawning.

This is the one where Lewis offers Taylor a drink, then Morse, who indignantly replies 'Never while on the job!' But in the next film, Last Seen Wearing, adapted by Thomas Ellice, he gets a sergeant to get him a whisky in a coffee mug at a murder scene; Strange turns up and knows all about it and warns Morse to pull himself together. This is about a schoolgirl who disappeared six months ago. Morse is convinced she's dead because these are the kinds of cases he's given (the 'three file' cases). Lewis thinks more optimistically.

It's a merry puddle involving headmaster Peter McEnery and his wife Fiona Mollison, the girls' parents Glyn Houston and Frances Barber, and former teacher Philip Bretherton (from As Time Goes By - thought he looked familiar). Julia Sawalha is a brief pupil; so is Liz Hurley.

The book's C.S. Lewis

The Settling of the Sun is an adaptation by Charles Wood, and he gives the dialogue especially a Pinter-y flavour, whilst director Peter Hammond seems to be going for a Nic Roeg / Altman Images style with whip pans and zooms and things seen briefly, which all goes well with Pheloung's spiky music. The horrendous treatment of prisoners by the Japanese in WWII is (pretty obviously) at the heart of it, though Dexter's identity twist is a doozy.

Some of the acting is perhaps over-wrought from Anna Calder-Marshall; with Robert Stephens in a well suited role as a waspish Don and Avis Bunnage as the... whatever her job is.

And a more straightforward episode from Dexter's first 1975 novel is Last Bus to Woodstock, which will cost you just £1144 for a Near Fine signed First. (Don't spend £2860 - no! No! And don't buy the unsigned First on ebay for £1154 - why would you?) Anyway, that's enough looking at first editions.

Michael Wilcox adapted, Peter Duffell directed.

Anthony Bate is the Professor, his lecture attended by John Thaw, eager student Holly Aird and between them, Colin Dexter.

It was another one where no one was murdered - refreshingly.

The young man who has stolen the money and locket off the dead girl is 'angry' with her for standing him up in the pub and making him look stupid - Dexter catches his characters well, characters who are often vile.

The Lady Vanishes (1979 Anthony Page)

They manged not to fuck it up, therefore quite enjoyable. Based on the Launder-Gilliatt script, with George Axelrod throwing in some new jokes and streamlining the story. (Though he could also have tidied up a couple of things - the way the 'Froy' written on the window magically disappears, for example.)

Cybill Shepherd and Elliott Gould are an eccentric bit of casting, not sure about the chemistry (when he finally kisses her, he clearly plants one on her chin.) Did love though the single take where Gould pops his head out of the train window and then ever so smoothly the stunt man climbs out and along the outside of the train.

Wasn't quite able to enjoy Dougie Slocombe's widescreen photography in TPTV's low res print (Chic Waterson does his usual smooth job on camera).

A Hammer production, with Angela Lansbury, Herbert Lom, Arthur Lowe, Ian Carmichael, Gerald Harper, Jenny Runacre, Vladek Sheybal. Filmed in Austria.

Inspector Morse - Season 1 (1987)

The Jaguar was a write-off, which had come off The Sweeney. You could see the road through the car floor.

I'd forgotten that DeBryn (Peter Woodthorpe) is the later incarnation of Endeavour's James Bradshaw. James Grout is Strange. We take it that his marriage to Joan didn't take. The fact that her parents and brother moved 'a long way away' mustn't have helped.

Looks like it was shot on celluloid. They must have been using some small cameras to do those pans in and out of the car.

I just learned in the Endeavour documentary that the London Metropolitan Orchestra recorded every Morse / Lewis / Endeavour orchestral score. Which is an interesting claim, as it wasn't founded until 1994. Again - call Morse. Barrington Pheloung is the constant throughout the whole series.

Appropriately enough the Duchess of Duke Street's Gemma Jones is in the first one (no pilot, you notice - straight into a 3-film series one). It's The Dead of Jericho, written by Anthony Minghella (from Dexter's fifth novel) and directed by Alastair Reid. With Patrick Troughton, the same year he died.

Minghella wrote Morse as an 'incomplete, fractured' character whilst Lewis is complete. He was grateful that Julian Mitchell wrote the other two in a more epigrammatic style - Minghella had left most of Morse's sentences unfinished!

It seems Morse may favour a lime marmalade for breakfast.

Morse / Thaw encountering Colin Dexter for the first time

Silent World of Nicholas Quinn is an enjoyable story of a University group which sets foreign examinations - is someone leaking the answers? Cast includes Barbara Flynn, Michael Gough (who turns out to be Morse's crossword nemesis 'Dedalus'), Clive Swift, Roger Lloyd Pack.

Evidence of Lewis' bouncing off Morse with humour:

Morse: "You know Morse's Law. There's always a fifty-fifty chance that the man who found the body did the deed."
Lewis: "Well I was going to arrest him on the spot, sir, but I thought I'd let you have the pleasure."

Barbara Flynn's character: "I like to be in complete command of myself when working."
Morse: "Really? I like to let go. I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination."

Things bog down somewhat with Service of All the Dead, adapted by Julian Mitchell. It was rather too churchy for us, had a large number of confusing murders and a not especially convincing denouement. Worse is that Morse is behaving like a desperate and love-sick child over Angela Morant, even though he suspects she's with another man - a Camel-smoking man, no less. Nice cinematography though, by Clive Tickner.

Also reference to Sherlock Holmes, 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'. 

"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident."
It's from the short story 'Silver Blaze'.

Morse's watch, a Jean Pierre, I think, couldn't track down the model:

It was quite a big gamble. Each episode cost £1 million. Despite it being repeated on ITV, then Channel 4, they didn't really get their money back until foreign sales kicked in.

Trying - Season 5 (2026)

The older daughter is attempting to build a relationship with her biological mother to Esther Smith's nervousness. (I now find her really irritating.) She needn't have worried - the 'mother' is useless. Darren Boyd attempts / pretends to row the Atlantic. Then sinks into a funk. It's not really that funny, but somehow still watchable.

Cold pizza for breakfast? Yummy!