Oxford’s finest: Morse … Lewis … Endeavour

I love Morse too, especially the earlier ones. The Lewis episode "And The Moonbeams Kisses The Sea" is a favourite of mine.

OP, I remember my parents watched Inspector Morse on our local PBS every Sunday evening. I had no interest. Now, I want to start at the beginning and work my way through the series. Great binge suggestion - do you know where / if the series is available?

To my mind the first two seasons of "Inspector Morse" were never bettered. I watch them every few years and they never get old: "The Dead of Jericho," "The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn," "Service of All the Dead," "The Wolvercote Tongue," "Last Seen Wearing," "the Settling of the Sun," and "Last Bus to Woodstock." Later seasons were OK, but these were the best written and the most beautifully directed (Anthony Minghella directed the great pilot "The Dead of Jericho").

Later episodes could be good, but they usually overdid the comedy of the Morse/Lewis shtick and skimped on the existential sense of dread felt in the early episodes. The murders began to seem too much like silly games played by rich people (like in Agatha Christie) rather than acts of genuine evil.

Thanks r1, I'll check that. Great title too.

I'm in Australia, r2, but I find Just Watch very helpful for streaming availability. If you're American, you're in luck for s1 of Morse on Amazon Prime and all of it on Britbox

OP / R4 Thank you! I have Amazon Prime and just added S1 to watchlist and will watch episode 1 tomorrow morning. I've been looking for something new to get me through the next 30 days of 'self-quarantine'.

Laurence Fox's shenanigans have made Lewis unwatchable for me. Pity, as some are very good.

One of the sweetest things I ever saw was the early (first? can't remember) episode of "Endeavour" when, towards the end of the episode Shaun Evans checked his rearview mirror in the iconic auto and they flashed John Thaw's face. Goosebump stuff.

R7 that was the pilot of Endeavour where his superior asked him where he saw himself in 20 years time. Great stuff.

I bought the complete box set of Inspector Lewis last year from shop.pbs.org. Plan on starting the binge watch this Saturday. Unlike most people at the DL, I really enjoy Laurence Fox. I especially enjoyed his performance as Lord Palmerston on Victoria

Cannot wait for Season/Series 6 of Endeavour which I think starts sometime next month on PBS.

I'm going to read Last Bus To Woodstock. Or listen - there is an audiobook narrated by the reliable Samuel West.

I was recently remembering the episode where Morse was being stalked. And the stalker tweaked his car alarm and, I believe, his home stereo system, so that opera blared from inside his flat, and his car's alarm wouldn't stop beeping for days, because he wasn't home.

R11 - That seems like a whole lot work on behalf of the stalker.

Both series are on Britbox, as well as 2 of Thaw's earlier series. Love The Sweeney.

R11 that is a preety sinister episode. He also rigs Morse's tapes up to set fire to his house and Murders Morse's mentor and dumps the corpse in his hotpress!

I was walking through Soho sometime in the late 90s, turned a cornered almost bumped right into John Thaw. I watched Morse religiously and, yes, thought he was very handsome. Needless to say, I all but stopped in surprise. I’m not one of those people who collar actors etc in the street but he still gave me the best ‘ Don’t you come near ! ‘ glare. Shorter than I imagined.

I lose interest halfway through. I’m more of a Jane Tennison fan.

Fans of Laurence Fox will want to see his very impressive full frontal scene in The Hole.

R17 - Is it worth paying see or just worth seeing?

Depends how anxious you are to see the goods. Movie itself is OK. Not great.

R19 - I was asking about the goods.

As I said—very impressive.

Here

Not as impressive as I remembered, but imagination can play tricks with memory.

I remember taping this on VCR in the early 2000s as a teenager and wanking to the freeze frame of him shaking his big cock.

Watched a documentary of Thaw on YouTube. Comments from family, friends, actors, and crew. He was apparently a very lovely man; his mother walked out on the family when he was about 12 and it messed him up, trust wise. But he comes across in the comments as a sweet man who was immensely talented but didn't think he was that great. Worth watching. One of the best bits, the positive, loving comments by his first wife (and mother of Abigail, who appears in later episodes as the editor).

He was a huge alkie

He was a huge alkie

I started watching it when I lived in Japan and didn't have access to US tv. Morse is still great. I could not get into Lewis and I thought Endeavour was pretentious.

I thought the solutions to the murders on Lewis were preposterous......then I saw Endeavor. I can’t even think of the right word for how ridiculous they are. And I notice Endeavor often ends with a radio broadcast in the background about a significant event that just happened (in order to let the audience know what year it is) and they are mostly events in the US, like space race, MLK assassination.. Do they have radio broadcasts announcing things that happened in the U.K. at the end of the U.K. version of the episodes?

"Morse" was by far the best of the three series, in large part due to Colin Dexter's writing, since he made Morse such a complex and interesting character (and his plots were so much more clever than the ones the TV writers dreamed up on their own--I recently saw 'Service of All the Dead" again and was taken by how fiendishly complex the murder plo is). Lewis was conceived of as a counterweight to Morse, and so was purposefully less cerebral, less conflicted, and less moody--the British adored him, and saw him as one of their own, and so took him to their hearts, which is why the "Lewis" series was so popular with them, even though he was not objectively a strong enough character to carry a series.

"Endeavour" has been much better than "Lewis," but not as strong as "Morse." It is almost inconceivable than Shaun Evans could grow into the same character as John Thaw played: his Morse is not dark enough nor narcissistic enough nor as temperamental. It's as if he's playing someone with much the same interests (nice cars, opera, and pretty women), but with a different personality. So i pretty much take him as a different character altogether. many of the episodes are quite well done, particularly when they emphasize period detail; some of the plots though have been absolutely ridiculous, such as ghe one with the serial killer who based his murders on the plots of operas, or the one with the tiger in the hedge maze. I do like Shaun Evans (even though he is nothing like John thaw either physically or as an actor), and I really like Anton Lesser as his superior.

Anton Lesser is marvelous. The contrast between his roles on Game of Thrones and Endeavour impressed me greatly.

I love Endeavour, but probably because I'm crushing on Shaun Evans. It's pretty hard to match the original series, between John Thaw, Anthony Minghella and Danny Boyle. When I watch old episodes, the only thing I dislike is Morse's wardrobe; it looks quite dated.

R30 great post. The best Lewis episodes were the early ones which referenced the Morse connection. They also tried to make Lewis a more dark character by killing off his beloved wife Val, thus removing his secure homelife and making him sadder but the series became a chore as it went on.

The best Morse episodes tended to be one's based on the Colin Dexter novels, he was very good at creating plots for his complex hero.

I saw the Lewis episode with DL Fave John Light and set in Jericho and referenceing Oedipus, it made a brief mention of the Morse 'pilot' The Dead Of Jericho which made the same literary references.

It was a good episode but like another I saw (can't remember the title off the top of my head but it starred Juliet Stevenson) it doesn't make a whole lot of sense why he first major murder occurred (other than to get the story going).

Laurence Fox constantly badmouthed Lewis, although he liked Kevin Whately he found it boring and tiresome and it is very unlikely he would make a series of HATHAWAY. I like Lizzie. She could star in MADDOX with Hathaway retired from the Force to become an Oxford don at Lonsdale College. Her DS would of course be an awkward, moody wunkerkind with a PhD in art history - I'm picturing a ginger.

Is there Morse/Lewis erotic fan fiction? that would be unbelievably creepy.

R34

Lewis does get progressively worse. By season 4 half the episodes have preposterous murders. I'm thinking of the religious themed one with Sorcha Cusack in a supporting role. Appalling.