Inspector Morse

[poliphilo]

I never got hooked on the TV series. I watched an episode or two. Gentle, middlebrow stuff, not really for me.

But the book was lying there and I wanted a change from Dickens. 

The first surprise was it's not very well written.  Awkwardness, pomposity, uncertainty of tone, too many adjectives and adverbs-  all the marks of the literary amateur.  I thought this was going to be at the high end of the market and it's not. Morse is a culture-buff, but his reported judgements are banal; Keats is  a  "fine poet. ...You should read him, Lewis",  Wagner is "exquisite", the spires of Oxford are "stately". Dorothy Sayers or P.D. James this ain't.

The second surprise was- hold on a minute- Morse is a porn-fiend. How very unJohn Thaw. He gripes at the News of the World for not being racy enough, he thumbs through a suspect's collection of "supremely pornographic" Scandanavian magazines and barely represses the urge to pocket one, he sends Lewis to do some detecting and passes the afternoon in a strip club, he appraises women in a way that may have been less offensive in 1976 than it is now.

Also he drinks too much. I don't know where the drink driving laws stood in the mid 70s but there's no doubt if he were around today he'd be persistently over the limit.

A bit of a saddo really. I suppose that's the point. He's a crap policeman who gets his results by woolgathering. A not uninteresting conceit.

The Oxford setting goes for less than I imagined it would. A lot of places are name-checked but otherwise this could be anywhere in middle England.

The final test of a whodunnit is whether it foxes you or not. I already have my eye on a suspect- and not the one that's been foregrounded to put us off the scent.   We'll see...

Comments

[momof2girls.livejournal.com]

I am not that crazy about the Morse TV series - try reading the books, by Colin Dexter. It's a good series.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I've read some of the books, and I like them. I didn't care for the TV series either, although I did watch it. The thing was, John Thaw's Morse had redeeming characteristics - he did a few 'nice things' for Lewis (although later on, he was a bastard when Lewis got promoted). The Morse of the books is a creep and a phoney.

Morse is a culture-buff, but his reported judgements are banal; Keats is a "fine poet. ...You should read him, Lewis", Wagner is "exquisite", the spires of Oxford are "stately". Dorothy Sayers or P.D. James this ain't.

I kind of think what the author is trying to say here is NOT that Morse is a complicated man and a culture buff, but that he is a PHONEY. We all know people like this, who pretend to love opera but only know of one opera, who pretend to love Beethoven but only know one symphony by name. I can't imagine that fans of the show would have stood for Morse being the leering letch that his character in the books actually was.

That's my opinion, anyway. The Morse books kept me company when I was having a battery of medical tests...

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I dislike the books very much, especially the "so very"s, but I enjoyed the TV series, until it got too wild and fantastic for my liking. It's quite amusing to watch them go into one college and emerge from another.
I also enjoy spotting people I know in the street scenes.

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

I've read a few of the books years ago; whilst I don't remember them being bad, I do recall thinking they were improved upon by the TV adaptation. (On the other hand, the Colin Dexter stories are definitely much better than the Morse - and Lewis - episodes penned originally for TV by other people). I admit Morse really grew on me by spending time at Oxford - it's fun, if a bit trainspotterish, to comment on all the film cuts where the location changes abruptly.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

You know what I love about the TV series? Seeing all the actors drafted in to play villains and corpses and hapless witnesses and saying "Cor, wow, what did he used to be in before, you know, the funny cop programme with whozit and thingummybob..." It works also for Begerac, which we have been watching at home. Bit parts by Warren Clarke and Greta Scacchi among others.

[goddlefrood.livejournal.com]

I never watched it much either when it was on, but was recently given the complete collection on DVD. They're gentle enough, although hardly taxing. My brother and mother both loved it and without wishing to denigrate them they're both far more easily impressed by wealth and position than I am.

The books really aren't very good at all, I've read a few mostly because they're easy enough reads and while away a few hours. It's little wonder really that there were far fewer books than there were TV programs. The main advanatage Morse as a television spectacle had was the settings. When description is not one's forte, as it isn't in Colin Dexter's case, then setting counts for little. No doubt one day, as with many of these things, someone will novelise the as yet unwritten down TV episodes.

Of course, there are many worse detective book series than Morse, naming no names.