Morse, Just Morse
The Lovely Linda and I spent a coupla hours with an old friend last night. Morse, or Inspector Morse, as they call his show; in fact he's a Deputy Chief Inspector. It's one of the British imports that a cable channel airs, along with some other first rate mystery programs from across The Big Pond.
Morse, who uses only his last name, even among friends, and pugnaciously insists on his title among those who aren't, had disappeared for the longest time. Then suddenly he was back and in a production we hadn't seen. Morse is dead, by the way. One of the shows -- probably the last -- that aired a while back concluded with his last breath. I don't know if they had run out of Colin Dexter stories, or if the producers got bored, which is hard to imagine.
Perhaps it was that John Thaw, who plays Morse, decided he'd had enough. (Kinda like how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got tired of Sherlock Holmes and killed him off, though he was subsequently revived at the request of Queen Victoria.) Thaw is a fine actor, and brings to the Morse character a consistency-cum-nuance that any mystery afficionado or just plain viewer has to respect, if not thoroughly enjoy.
Thaw was Morse. If you read any of the books, it's hard to imagine that you could imagine anyone but the television character in the printed pages. He is irascible, often cranky, and sometimes wrong. He is erudite and intellectual, drives an old maroonish Jaguar, loves classical music, and drinks too much. Probably it was the latter that wound up doing him in ultimately, prematurely.
Morse has loved many women, most often in a regrettably unrequited sort of way. However, in this episode, he winds up with a charming woman at a delightful, high-class hotel in Bath, with intentions for a fine repast in the dining room as well as room service, the latter no doubt for breakfast. She is a lovely lady indeed, and to her he does finally reveal his name. His mother was a Quaker, he informs her, and that is a clue, as people of that religion often named their children after worthy qualities like Hope and Patience. Clue two was that his father loved Captain Cook, and if you know the name of his ship, you know Morse's first name. Okay, clue three...his name is an anagram for Around Eve.
Morse reveals this information in front of his sergeant, a loyal if oft-tried second-fiddle named Lewis played diligently by Kevin Whately. Morse frequently has no money or only large bills -- both happen in this episode -- so when he drags his sergeant to a pub for a pint, he then leaves Lewis with the tab. And, adding insult to the fiscal injury, the subordinate also has to have orange juice because he is driving. So there they were in a pub with the pulchritudinous protagonist, when the Morse's moniker is revealed as Endeavor. Poor sot, his sergeant observes. Quite delicious, on our side of the glass, and we applaud the revelation, even though we'd known the truth for some time.
Morse is a very human character, complex but not complicated. He tells the femme non-fatale, who is a music teacher instructing a student in Vivaldi that he thinks that composer's only value is perking up her student's spirits. He prefers Wagner, he says, for his beauty and his ugliness. Like the sordid nature of police work, which also, through investigating this case, brought him to her.
Morse is frequently clumsy with women, and against his wishes, he is pushed by Lewis into confronting our lady as a possible suspect in a double homicide. After all, in other cases, Morse has succumbed to manipulative feminine charms and lost his way. So out of duty and against instinct, he steps in it, and almost loses the belle in the process. Happily, it is not a terminal error.
Dunno why American producers can't come up with the quality the Brits have in Morse, or in David Suchet's brilliant and fastidious Belgian detective, Agatha Christie's Poirot. Or Frost or Dalgliesh or the others. They don't insist that every actor be beautiful, far from it, nor that every hero be heroic, at least not all the time. Actually, Timothy Hutton has gotten close with the Nero Wolfe series, giving credit where it is richly due, but it's hardly enough. So we enjoy our friends when they appear, watching reruns until we're embarrassed, and then we turn with a sigh to crossword puzzles.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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