Inspector Morse (TV series)

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Inspector Morse
Morse (left) as played by John Thaw, with Lewis (right) as played by Kevin Whately
Format	Drama
Created by	Colin Dexter, Tony Warren
Starring	John Thaw, Kevin Whately, James Grout
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	33 (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Zenith, Central Independent Television, Carlton Television
Running time	1 - 2 hours (including adverts)
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV
Picture format	4:3
Original run	January 6, 1987 – November 15, 2000
Chronology
Related shows	Lewis
External links
IMDb profile

Inspector Morse is a television series based on Colin Dexter’s popular novels about Chief Inspector Morse. The series, shown on Britain’s ITV network, was made by Zenith Productions for Central Independent Television (later acquired by Carlton). The series comprises 33 two-hour episodes (100 minutes excluding commercials) — twenty more episodes than there are novels — produced between 1987 and 2000. The final episode was adapted from the final novel.

1 Production
2 Music
3 Locations
4 Legacy
5 Spinoff series
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Production

Morse was played by John Thaw, and the faithful 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. Dexter makes a cameo appearance in all but three of the episodes. The series remains popular and is frequently repeated on ITV and ITV3 in Britain.

John Thaw had a special appreciation of the fact that Morse was different from classic characters such as James Bond and Sherlock Holmes. Morse was brilliant but he wasn’t 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 ‘bust’ his culprit; ironic circumstances have the case end and the crime brought to him. Also, Morse was a romantic but had little success in meeting women.

Morse is a character whose talents and intelligence were being wasted in positions which fail to match his abilities. Several references are made to the fact that Morse would have been promoted above and beyond chief inspector at Thames Valley CID, but his cynicism and lack of ambition, coupled also to veiled hints that he may have made enemies in high places, frustrate his progression despite his intelligence and Oxford connections.

Morse is a highly credible detective and plausible human being. His penchant for drinking, his life filled with difficult personal relationships, and his negligence with 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, differing from the literary character’s diabetes-related demise.

[edit] Music

The theme and incidental music for the series was written by Barrington Pheloung and utilises a motif based on the Morse code for "M.O.R.S.E." (-- --- ·-· ··· ·).

In the documentary entitled The Mystery of Morse, Pheloung states that he occasionally spelled out the name of the killer in Morse code in the music, or alternately spelled out the name of another character as a red herring.

Inspector Morse uses incidental music much less frequently than many other television detective programmes such as Midsomer Murders or Agatha Christie's Poirot; in the earlier series, it is rarely more than the occasional minimalist long note on a violin. This contrasts with the regular use of 'real world' music - music that would be heard by the characters; the choice of classical music excerpts is reflected by the success of several collections of ‘music from the Morse series’ recordings released on CD.

The TV series and the CDs play some of Morse’s favorites, Mozart, Schubert, and Wagner.

[edit] Locations

Beaumont College (in the TV episodes ‘The Last Enemy’ and ‘The Infernal Serpent’) and Lonsdale College (in The Riddle of the Third Mile, the book on which that episode was based) are both fictional Oxford colleges. The real Brasenose College and Exeter College was used to represent Lonsdale, while Corpus Christi is used for Beaumont. Both fictional names are from real streets in Oxford.

[edit] Legacy

In November 2005, the Jaguar Mark 2 car (with number plate 248 RPA) used in the television series sold for more than £100,000.^[1]

[edit] Spinoff series

A pilot episode, Lewis, starring Kevin Whately as the now-promoted Inspector Lewis went into production in July 2005. This pilot was broadcast on ITV on 29 January 2006, and in the US it aired on PBS on July 31 of the same year under the title Inspector Lewis. A further three episodes were broadcast on ITV in February and March 2007, and a second series (of 4 episodes) was broadcast in February and March 2008.