Sunday 24 March 2019

Inspector Morse - Season 7 (1993)

Deadly Slumber d. Stuart Orme , scr. Daniel Boyle

A fairly straightforward seeming case (murder in garage) turns out to be riven with complications. Morse makes unlikely friendship with one of the suspects, a former bookie mogul (Brian Cox) - Morse feels for him because he has a brain dead daughter as a result of the dead man's operation going wrong. The acting of Janet Suzman and Jason Durr is a little suspect, though we do get Ian McNeice as the pathologist.

Dexter shows Morse and Lewis up to see a don; eagle eye Q spots the Peppard Road and the pub and Howard's End house in Peppard Common.

The Day of the Devil d. Stephen Whittaker

Daniel Boyle's episode opens promisingly enough with urgency - an unconscious guard, an escape from a prison hospital and a manhunt. Unfortunately it descends into utter farce, particularly when this happens:


(A laugh out loud moment.) I guess, with a character called Hieronymous St-John (Kevin Stoney)  and Keith Allen in a variety of disguises, we're not supposed to take it seriously:


Harriet Walter and Richard Griffiths gamely play it straight. With Michael Culver, Gavin Richards and Katrina Levon as a useful WPC.

Devil-worshippers are anti the Bomb, because 'Could it be that Hell is not so commodious after all. They couldn't cope with the sudden influx.' Lewis dazzles Strange with 'Exegesis on Ancient Grimoires'. The ending is particularly hard to take seriously.

We identify one pub as the now closed Shoulder of Mutton in Owlswick, Aylesbury. Q thinks a later one is in Binfield.

Twilight of the Gods d. Herbert Wise, scr. Julian Mitchell

Morse is in a good mood indeed with one of his opera singer legends (Sheila Gish) in town - triggering banter between he and Lewis. Then she's shot... Good plot involves extremely rude mogul, played with relish by Robert Hardy, but with a vary variable and wrong Lithuanian accent - whoever plays his long-suffering secretary is good. John Gielgud is a chancellor, Jean Anderson his wife. Didn't recognise Allan Corduner as the pianist but thought Rachel Weisz looked vaguely familiar. Dexter is sat behind Gielgud.

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