For many years House Blanchard turned to public television every Thursday night for Mystery! That British-produced show managed to do something consistently that American film making finds nearly impossible: bring literary characters to life in ways that not only satisfy their original fans but pleasantly surprise and enrich the presence of those characters. David Suchet's perfect Hercule Poirot, Jeremy Brett's exquisite Sherlock Holmes, Roy Marsden as Adam Dalgliesh, all stand out. But my favorite was John Thaw as Colin Dexter's Morse.
Thaw played the brooding and cranky Oxford detective in more films that Dexter wrote stories, I think. I have to say that I think that the ghost written episodes were generally better than Dexter's novels.
Morse had a sidekick: Robbie Lewis. Characteristically, they were opposites. Morse was over-educated, overly enthusiastic about opera, and was overly fond of English beer. He was also bitterly unhappy. Lewis was as unrefined as a bag of fish and chips, but married and generally content with his life. I loved the series from its quirky opening music to the way Morse scowled Lewis's name. The series finally perished with the primary actor.
I have blogged once before about the return of Lewis to Masterpiece Mystery. Kevin Whately is back with second series now running on Sunday nights. The first two episodes of the new season are as good as anything the mystery series has ever done. I hate to say it, I really do, but it's better than Morse. Lewis's character has grown. He is now fond of Wagner (an obvious bit of reverence for his former senior partner), but he still doesn't like to hear Shakespeare quoted when he hasn't had enough sleep. His sidekick James Hathaway (Laurence Fox) is the more educated and predictably less content of the pair. As always, the drama turns on class and pretension, and the insecurities of people in such a system.
Having grown to love Whately's Lewis from the original series, I am delighted with his return. Likewise the Hathaway character grew on me immediately. But the real strength of the series is the writing. It is just magnificent story telling. If you like great TV, this would be it.
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