|
CORRIDOR OF MYSTERY |
DARK
CORRIDORS VOL. 2, No. 12 |
 John Thaw as Morse |
|
The pain grows unbearable:
Morse ends his 12-year run on PBS
By
KINNEY LITTLEFIELD
of TheColumnists.com
My man Morse, he's up and left me.
Up and left all of us "Mystery!" mavens, that is, after more than 12 years of criminal pursuit.
In
a very final kinda way, didn't he?
But you'll have to watch the last, gloom-tinged Inspector Morse
murder mystery, called "Inspector Morse: The Remorseful
Day" (9 p.m. Thursday on PBS), to see.
Sob.
(So
sorry. I can't bleedin' bring myself to admit the end is near,
let alone write about it. I've lost my appetite. I'm fading away.
I can barely type).
And I'm just fumin' mad at Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse novels, who decided to end it all by simply not scribbling any more Morse tomes. Or so he says--the fink--in "The Last Morse: A Documentary," airing at 8 p.m. preceding "The Remorseful Day."
Anyway,
onward. This farewell Morse movie is actually a right proper
homage to the erudite, hard-drinking-and-thinking Brit detective
played by master actor John Thaw.
After all, the self-destructive Chief Inspector has been ailing
and weary for a while now. In fact--
(Ah
no, I mustn't. But damn, I can't believe those icy blue eyes
won't be around anymore).
Well, no, they won't. But girls--and Morse did lure the ladies, didn't he?--you can glory in them for one last caper, as Morse chases the killer of his former nurse Yvonne Harrison, with whom he was more than a bit smitten.
|
|
 |
Seems Morse is taking a wee bit of a rest-up in his bachelor digs in Oxford--quaffing Glenfiddich, inhaling Wagner, even doing some bird-watching (the feathered kind) when he gets a visit from fellow Glenfiddich guzzler Chief Superintendent Strange--and yes, he is--as played by James Grout.
It's back on the case you go, Morse--even though retirement is near. Harrison met her bloody end a while back but some anonymous tipster-type has been teasing Strange into reopening the case. Looks like there are suspects aplenty--a vaguely unsavory husband and winsome doctor-daughter; an odd, hearing-impaired son; a scruffy burglar and a cabbie named Paddy and a randy roofer.
A veritable interrogatory feast.
Now Morse is loath to involve himself in a case in which he was once so privately…well…involved. But pretty soon he's chasing a possibly dead body inside a giant garbage dump.
Joining Morse is--of course--his regular lesser half and comedic foil Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whately).
For years it's been a toss-up whether Lewis or Morse would die first from abominable diets. Lewis snarfs fried everything and Morse tipples constantly--not smart when you have diabetes.
 |
|
|
Now
on Thursday we'll know the end.
(No,
really, I can't bear it).
But
it is the end.
And let us cogitate.
Such a partnership.
How could Morse have gotten anywhere without Lewis to chauffeur him, pub to pub?
Could
plodding Lewis ever have survived the Thames Valley CID without
Morse?
Morose Morse was Lewis's inspiration.
And ours.
Now,
Morse no more--almost.
Does Lewis want his own series or something?
Well, he's not getting it from me. Morse is my man.
( But not always. Our intimate, um, relationship didn't start as a drop-dead love affair, dearies. I mean old Morsey is hopeless. He's a regular loner, he is. A right proper clunk with romance).
But like "Remorseful Day" character Deborah Richardson, who lives with petty crook Harry Repp but doesn't love him--ah poor Harry, as you'll see!--I just liked havin' a guy around.
(Not that I'm puttin' myself in the same category as that tart Debbie, mind you!)
But back to my man Morse. Grouchy as he was, he made me feel safe, he did. Even bellying up to the bar, he was on the case.
Oh sure there were other detective-blokes on public TV.
But I'm sorry--that tortured copper Dave Creegan (Robson Green) on "Touching Evil" did not float my boat. Too shifty-looking.
Ross Tanner (Clive Owen) on "Second Sight"? Going blind as a bat, poor dear. And hallucinatin' worse than Timothy Leary to boot.
Yes, there were other Brits on other channels. Robbie Coltrane as boozy Fitz the forensic shrink on "Cracker" on A&E?
A tour de force turn by ole Robbie for sure. But Fitz was a nut--a real mean mother who liked to rip your psyche into rags, guilty or not.
Right now I'm also checking into "Hetty Wainthropp Investigates" on BBC America. Her third season started up here in the States on Saturday.
(But is chasing crime a suitable pursuit for a middle-class matron, I ask you? Looks like ole Hetty--Patricia Routledge--who's gotta be pushin' past 60, got her panties wadded one day and lost all sense of decency. She's beyond nosy. She even straddles a motorcycle on occasion. Go figure).
So what if Morse puts most folks off with his superior ways. (I mean, that red Jag-U-ar he loves to spin around town).
So did Sherlock.
So what if Morse is grumpy and grunty and constantly clashes with Lewis and Strange?
Strange would never have kept Morse around if he hadn't been so effin' brilliant in the ratiocination department, now would he?
Morse just scrunches his lobes together until he divines how crimes happen. And Thaw was always deft at suggesting Morse's mental gear-grinding. It's all right out there, playing across Thaw's elegant, mutable mug.
Classy,
like I said.
(By
the way Thaw ain't lyin' down on the job in future. He'll star
in "The Glass," a six-part serial drama for ITV/Granada.
Maybe it'll splash across the pond to us).
And another thing I dug about the Morse mysteries:
They grooved to a different beat. They were clever but they took their time about things. Time to savor the little nuances. OK, time for the non-MTV generation to catch up.
Morse didn't strong-arm the punks into spillin' their sins in a New York minute. He actually thought about who done it.
You
know he mighta dug Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) on "Murder,
She Wrote."
(Now
there's a match made in reunion-movie heaven. They had that sophisticated
way about them, those two did. That love of puzzles).
We viewers got to puzzle along profitably at home too.
Dexter always served us a full plate of low-life scum to suspect.
And do you know, old Dex actually knew very little about real-life police procedurals?
Here are his very words.
"If you write whodunits, if the central idea of the author is to dangle half a dozen people in front of your noses so you always guess the wrong one…the less you know about police work the better," he says in "The Last Morse: A Documentary."
Oh, "The Last Morse."
(I'm tearing up again mateys).
Now if this were American telly I'd say "Never mind that Morse makes a pretty conclusive adieu. Remember Bobby's bad dream in 'Dallas'? We'll just shill out the really big bucks and Dexter'll darn well pen another page-turner." Then Thaw won't be able to resist doing Morse again."
|
we hardly knew ye! |
 |
But this is Brit TV, luvvies, even if it is on American TV. It's only co-produced by Boston's WGBH. And those Brits don't easily sell out. Maybe 'cause they're used to living on peanuts.
(Just wait till they go on the Euro).
Plus psst - they say "Mystery!" will be losing its Brit accent in a season or so and goin' murder American-style with U.S.-set slayings.
As Dexter says in the Morse documentary: "I think we killed enough people in Oxford, too--81 (was) the bodybag count."
Fair enough. Guess it's time to kill off some Yanks.
So
there you go. Time to bite that proverbial bullet, blokeys, as
it were.
Time to majorly mourn Morse.
© 2001 by Kinney Littlefield. The photos from "The Remorseful Day" on this page and the index page are used courtesy of Carlton Productions and WGBH Boston.
You can contact Kinney Littlefield with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |