It was followed by the spin-off Lewis, and the prequel Endeavour.
Overview
The series was made by Zenith Productions for Central Independent Television, and first shown in the UK on the ITV network of regional broadcasters. Between 1995 and 1996 the commissioning company was Carlton Television, and towards the end of the series it was a joint venture by Carlton and WGBH.
Inspector Morse is frequently repeated on the subsidiary ITV channel ITV3 in the UK,[3] although repeat broadcasts also aired on Channel 4 during the show's original run.[4] Repeats are also shown on television channels in other European countries and in Australia.
Morse was played by John Thaw and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Lewis, by Kevin Whately. The character of Lewis was transformed from the elderly Welshman and ex-boxer of the novels to a much younger Geordie police sergeant with a family, as a foil to Morse's cynical streak. Morse's first name, Endeavour, is revealed on only one occasion, when he explains to a lady friend that his father was obsessed with Captain James Cook, so he was named after HMS Endeavour. On other occasions, he usually answers, "Morse. Everyone just calls me Morse", or dryly replies "Inspector", when asked what his first name is.[3]
Thaw appreciated that Morse was different from many other classic detectives such as Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. Morse was brilliant, but he was not always right. He often arrested the wrong person or came to the wrong conclusion. As a result, unlike many classic sleuths, Morse does not always simply arrest his culprit; ironic circumstances have the case end and the crime brought to him[clarification needed]. Morse was also a romantic,[5] frequently mildly and gently flirting with or asking out colleagues, witnesses, or suspects — occasionally bordering on the unprofessional — but he had little success in love.
Morse is a character whose talents and intelligence are being wasted in positions that fail to match his abilities. It is mentioned several times that Morse would have been promoted above and beyond Chief Inspector at Thames Valley Police CID, but his cynicism and lack of ambition, coupled also with veiled hints that he may have made enemies in high places, frustrate his progression despite his Oxford connections. In the episode "Second Time Around", it is revealed that Morse opposed capital punishment and long sentences, which was upheld by his former superior who later became assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and his former colleague thought of him as "a poor policeman and a very good detective".
Morse is a highly credible detective and a plausible human being. His penchant for drinking, his life filled with difficult personal relationships and his negligence toward his health, however, make him a more tragic character than previous classic sleuths.
Morse's eventual death in the final episode "The Remorseful Day" is caused by heart problems exacerbated by heavy drinking, although in the books his death is diabetes related.
Inspector Morse was filmed for ITV using 16mm film stock. Since its production, a number of releases of the show on DVD have been made using various remastered editions of the episodes in the 4:3 ratio. In recent years, ITV has overseen a high-definition restoration of the drama from the original 16mm negatives so as to boost the HD content on ITV3 HD. Many of these HD episodes retain the original 4:3 ratio, though some of the later episodes (including the series finale) have been opened into a 16:9 widescreen frame. These more recent remastered editions have not been released on Blu-ray.[6]
Morse's interests
Morse had diverse passions: music (especially opera, with Mozart and Wagner among his favourite composers), poetry, art, the classics, British real ale,[7] classic cars and cryptic crossword puzzles. When seen at home, Morse is usually listening to music on his Roksan Xerxes record player,[8][9] solving a crossword, reading classic literature - for instance, Jude the Obscure in season 2, episode 2's Last Seen Wearing - or drinking ale. In his home, the living room had a chess set containing classical Staunton chess pieces, while the art on the walls includes etchings of Roman ruins by G.B. Piranesi from his Vedute di Roma series. While working, Morse subsists on quickly downed pints of ale (preferably real ale) in pubs, usually bought by Lewis, who struggles to keep up. Many of his cases touch on Morse's interests and often his knowledge 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 due to 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 people who have changed their identities by creating a new name using an anagram. In "Masonic Mysteries", he is maliciously implicated in the murder of a woman when his Times newspaper with the crossword puzzle completed in his handwriting is placed in the victim's house. In that same episode, the writer names Morse's old inspector from when he was a detective sergeant as "Macnutt", an homage to D.S. Macnutt, the famous and influential Observer puzzle setter 'Ximenes'.
In "The Sins of the Fathers", he investigates a murder in a brewery-owning family and, in the first episode of the series, "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 automobile, which is damaged at the beginning and the end of the story, being used to prevent the escape of the perpetrators. His interest in classic cars is also explored in "Driven to Distraction", in which he suspects a car salesman of murder. He seems to dislike Jeremy Boynton so strongly that, when he refers to Morse's own Jaguar as "she", this convinces Morse 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, saying that her suicide would not influence students to do the same. Investigating the killing of a retired detective in "Second Time Around", Morse is haunted by an early case of his in which a young girl had been murdered and an obvious suspect could have very well been innocent.
The theme and incidental music for the series were written by Barrington Pheloung and used a motif based on the Morse code for "MORSE": (--/---/.-./.../.). The composer works the five letters into four three-beat bars as follows:
The motif is played solo at the beginning and recurs all the way through.[10] In the documentary, The Mystery of Morse, Pheloung states that he occasionally spelled out the name of the killer in Morse code in the music, or alternatively spelled out the name of another character as a red herring. The series also included opera and other classical genres as part of its soundtrack, most notably pieces by Richard Wagner and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose Magic Flute is a significant plot device in one episode.[11]
Locations
Beaumont College (in the TV episode "The Last Enemy") and Lonsdale College (in "The Riddle of the Third Mile", the book on which "The Last Enemy" was based) are both fictional Oxford colleges. The real Brasenose College and Exeter College were used to represent Lonsdale, while Corpus Christi was used for Beaumont. Both fictional names are from real streets in Oxford; a real Lonsdale College exists at Lancaster University (named for the adjacent Lancashire region of Lonsdale Hundred, as is the Oxford street) but has no relation to Dexter's fictional Lonsdale. St Saviour's College in the episode "Fat Chance" is also fictitious; New College was used as the location for it. Merton and University College were used for the fictional Beaufort College in the episode "The Infernal Serpent". Christ Church appears in "The Daughters of Cain" as the fictional Wolsey College; it was founded by Thomas Wolsey. In a number of episodes, the main quad at Wadham College is used, especially the classic view as seen from the main entrance — unlike the students, the actors were allowed to walk on the grass. Eton College was used to depict various parts of Oxford through the series, notably the county court in the episode "The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn", while St John's Beaumont School, Old Windsor, became the Foreign Examinations Syndicate in the same episode, with both external and internal filming taking place there. Many of the generic locations used throughout the series, including Morse's house, were situated in Ealing, London, amongst the residential streets to the north of Ealing Broadway. Some scenes were also filmed at Brunel University and Hillingdon Hospital, both in west London. The Port of Dover was used for the "Deceived by Flight" episode.[12]
Props
The Regency red 1960 Jaguar Mark 2 2.4L car (with number plate 248 RPA) used by Morse throughout the television series became synonymous with the main character, despite Morse's driving a Lancia in the early novels. (After the start of the TV series, the novels changed to the Jaguar, but no reference is made in the books as to why or when Morse changes cars. Howerver, Colin Dexter was impressed by the idea of the Jaguar, suggested by John Thaw, and had the Lancia changed to a Jaguar in subsequent reprints of his stories.[13]) The Jaguar was given away in a competition a year after filming ended and in 2002, it was auctioned for £53,200, many times the going rate for a "normal" 2.4.[14] In November 2005, it was sold again for more than £100,000.[15]
The spin-off Lewis, starring Kevin Whately as the now promoted (and widowed, making the character's situation closer to Morse's) Inspector Lewis, premiered in 2006 on ITV. Nine series were made, with the last concluding in November 2015. It aired in the USA on PBS under the title Inspector Lewis. On 2 November 2015, ITV announced that the show would end after its ninth series, following the decision made by Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox to retire from their roles in the series. Whately announced that the show had "gone on long enough", with his character having done many stories between Morse and Lewis after he took on the role thirty years prior.[16]
In 2012, ITV aired a two-hour special prequel film, Endeavour, portraying a young Morse, with author Colin Dexter's participation. Set in 1965, Shaun Evans plays the young Detective Constable Morse, who is preparing to hand in his resignation when he becomes involved in an investigation into a missing schoolgirl. This was followed in 2013 by the first series comprising four episodes. Filming for the ninth and last series, set in 1972, began on 22 May 2022 and ended on 26 August 2022.[17][18] In the UK, the three episodes of the final series were broadcast between 26 February and 12 March 2023. In the United States, the episodes were broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service between 18 June and 2 July.
Related Research Articles
Norman Colin Dexter was an English crime writer known for his Inspector Morse series of novels, which were written between 1975 and 1999 and adapted as an ITV television series, Inspector Morse, from 1987 to 2000. His characters have spawned a sequel series, Lewis, from 2006 to 2015, and a prequel series, Endeavour, from 2012 to 2023.
Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse, GM, is the eponymous fictional character in the series of detective novels by British author Colin Dexter. On television, he appears in the 33-episode drama series Inspector Morse (1987–2000), in which John Thaw played the character, as well as the (2012–2023) prequel series Endeavour, portrayed by Shaun Evans. The older Morse is a senior Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officer with the Thames Valley Police in Oxford in England and, in the prequel, Morse is a young detective constable rising through the ranks with the Oxford City Police and, in later series, the Thames Valley Police.
John Edward Thaw, was an English actor in television, stage and cinema, best known for his starring roles in the television series Inspector Morse as Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse and in The Sweeney as Detective Inspector Jack Regan.
Kevin Whately is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Neville "Nev" Hope in the comedy drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet; Robert "Robbie" Lewis in the British crime drama Inspector Morse (1987–2000) and Lewis (2006–2015); and Jack Kerruish in the drama series Peak Practice (1993–1995), although he has appeared in numerous other roles.
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London. It stars John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter. It was produced by the Thames Television subsidiary Euston Films for broadcast on the ITV network in the UK between 2 January 1975 and 28 December 1978.
Lewis is a British television detective drama produced for ITV, first airing in 2006 (pilot) then 2007. It is a spin-off from Inspector Morse and, like that series, it is set in Oxford. Kevin Whately reprises his character Robert "Robbie" Lewis, who was Morse's sergeant in the original series. Lewis has now been promoted to detective inspector and is assisted by DS James Hathaway, portrayed by Laurence Fox, who was promoted to inspector before the eighth series. The series also stars Clare Holman as forensic pathologist Dr. Laura Hobson, likewise reprising her role from Inspector Morse; and, from the eighth season, Angela Griffin as DS Lizzie Maddox.
Detective Sergeant/Detective Inspector Robert "Robbie" Lewis is a fictional character in the Inspector Morse crime novels by Colin Dexter. The "sidekick" to Morse, Lewis is a detective sergeant in the Thames Valley Police, and appears in all 13 Morse novels. In the television adaptation, Inspector Morse, he is played by Kevin Whately. Following the conclusion of the series, Whately reprised the role as the lead character in Lewis, in which the character has been promoted to the rank of inspector.
Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Strange is a fictional character in the television series Inspector Morse, played by James Grout. The character also appears, as a Police Constable and Detective Sergeant, in the prequel series Endeavour, portrayed by Sean Rigby. Although Strange does not appear in every episode of Inspector Morse, he is present in the whole series from beginning to end. He is absent from only a few of the intervening episodes. Strange's first name is never revealed in the Inspector Morse series.
James Hathaway is the fictional CID Detective Inspector working with Inspector Lewis in the ITV television series Lewis. He is played by Laurence Fox. Hathaway holds the rank of Detective Sergeant until the penultimate series of Lewis in 2014, in which he is promoted to the rank of Inspector following a brief break from the police.
The Dead of Jericho, published in 1981, is a work of English detective fiction by Colin Dexter. It is the fifth novel in the Inspector Morse series. In 1987 it was adapted as the first episode of the highly successful television series inspired by the novels, also called Inspector Morse.
Last Bus to Woodstock is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the first of 13 novels in his Inspector Morse series.
Last Seen Wearing is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the second novel in the Inspector Morse series.
The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the third novel in Inspector Morse series.
Death Is Now My Neighbour is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the 12th novel in the Inspector Morse series.
The Daughters of Cain is a crime novel by Colin Dexter. It is the eleventh novel in the Inspector Morse series.
Endeavour is a British television detective drama series on ITV. It is a prequel to the long-running Inspector Morse series. Shaun Evans portrays the young Endeavour Morse beginning his career as a detective constable, and later as a detective sergeant, with the Oxford City Police CID. Endeavour is the third of the Inspector Morse series, following the original Inspector Morse (1987–2000) and its spin-off, Lewis (2006–2015).
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