Inspector Morse (TV series)

 

Inspector Morse (TV series)

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Inspector Morse
Genre	Crime Drama
Created by	Colin Dexter Tony Warren
Developed by	Anthony Minghella Kenny McBain
Written by	Varied (one per episode)
Directed by	Varied (one per episode)
Starring	John Thaw Kevin Whately James Grout
Theme music composer	Barrington Pheloung
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	7 full series (1987–1993) and 5 specials (1995–2000)
No. of episodes	33 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Ted Childs
Producer(s)	Zenith Productions Central Independent Television
Location(s)	Oxford, England
Running time	1h44m - 1h40m
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV
Picture format	4:3
Original run	6 January 1987 (1987-01-06) – 15 November 2000 (2000-11-15)
Chronology
Related shows	Lewis Endeavour

Inspector Morse is a British detective drama television series based on a series of novels by Colin Dexter. It starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis. The series comprises 33 two-hour episodes (100 minutes excluding commercials) — 20 more episodes than there are novels — produced between 1987 and 2000. Dexter made uncredited cameo appearances in all but three of the episodes.

The series was first shown on Britain's ITV network, was made by Zenith Productions for Central Independent Television. Later, it was produced by Carlton UK Productions between 1995 and 1996. Towards the series end, it was made by Carlton and WGBH.

Every episode involved a new murder investigation featuring several guest stars, and showed a complete story. Writer Anthony Minghella scripted three including the first, The Dead of Jericho, which was filmed in the summer of 1986, and aired on January 6, 1987 featuring Gemma Jones, Patrick Troughton and James Laurenson. Its other writers included Julian Mitchell (10 episodes), Daniel Boyle (5) and Alma Cullen (4 episodes), and its directors included John Madden (4 episodes), Herbert Wise (3), Peter Hammond (3), Adrian Shergold (3) and Danny Boyle (2 episodes).^[1]

The series remains popular and is frequently repeated on ITV1 and ITV3 in Britain.^[2]

 

Morse's interests

 

Morse had 'highbrow' passions: music (especially opera; Mozart and Wagner among his favourites), poetry, art, classics, English real ale, classic cars and cryptic crossword puzzles. When seen at home, Morse is usually listening to music, solving a crossword, reading classic literature, or drinking ale. While working, Morse subsists on quickly downed pints of ale in pubs, usually bought by Lewis who struggles to keep up. Many of his cases touch on Morse's interests and it is often his knowledge that helps him solve them.

In "The Death of the Self", the episode ends with Morse seeing one of the characters, an opera singer recovering from a long absence through stage-fright, make her 'comeback' performance at the amphitheatre in Verona, while in "Twilight of the Gods", he investigates the life of one of his opera idols, Gwladys Probert, a world-famous soprano. In "Who Killed Harry Field?", the murder victim is a painter, and in "The Way Through the Woods", Morse researches the pre-Raphaelite movement to aid his investigations.

In several episodes, Morse's crossword-solving ability helps him to spot where people have changed identities by creating a new name which is an anagram. In "Masonic Mysteries", he is maliciously implicated in the murder of a woman when his Times newspaper is placed in the victim's house, with his handwriting filling in the crossword. In the same episode, the writer names Morse's old Inspector from when he was a detective sergeant as 'Macnutt' in homage to D.S. Macnutt, better known as the famous and influential Observer puzzle setter 'Ximenes'.

In "The Sins of the Fathers", he investigates a murder in a brewery-owning family while, in the first episode, "The Dead of Jericho", he compares the life of a dead woman with that of Jocasta, the mother of Oedipus. The same episode also introduced his Jaguar Mark 2 car (which is damaged at the start and end of the story). His interest in classic cars is also explored in "Driven to Distraction" where, he suspects a car-salesman of murder. He so strongly seems to dislike Jeremy Boynton that he refers to Morse's own Jaguar as "she", which makes Morse convinced of his guilt.

In "Cherubim and Seraphim", he investigates the suicide of his niece and discusses with her English teacher her interest in the poet Sylvia Plath, who also killed herself. The teacher defends the teaching of Plath's poetry to students and says that her suicide will not influence students to do the same. In "Second Time Around", investigating the killing of a retired detective, Morse is haunted by an early case of his in which a young girl had been murdered and an obvious suspect could very well be innocent.