‘It’s Just Morse, Sir…..Just Morse’
. -. -.. . .- …- — — ..- .-. / — — — .-. … .
The Re-Run Entrapment
I’m often accused of watching TV re-runs of TV re-runs and it is true, to some extent, I do like to re-visit — as I prefer to put it — TV series of years ago that I have watched before, maybe even more than once before, but enjoy immensely.
Favourites include Midsomer Murders, Lewis, Endeavour and Inspector Morse. There are others, and most date back to the 1980s or 90s. They are all detective series and have run on British television for a long time. There is a link between three of those I’ve mentioned, the other is something of an outlier.
They’ll all be on the internet…..somewhere
Midsomer Murders is the exception, in that there isn’t anything linking it to the others. The other three, then, do have a link.
The Barnabys
Midsomer Murders was set (when it first aired!) somewhere in modern day south central rural England. Judging by some of the names given to the scene locations, Somerset seems about right. In fact some village names mentioned in several episodes actually exist in that county, though some of the story-lines fit better with Hampshire and Berkshire in the area known as ‘the home counties’
The main detective characters are a CID chief inspector and his side-kick sergeant. The programme first aired in 1997 and has run, so far, for 23 series — another 2 planned for broadcast soon.
The cast, over this period, has changed several times, with even the leading detective character played by John Nettles as Tom Barnaby then Neil Dudgeon as John Barnaby. John supposedly the cousin of Tom.
The series is based on the Chief Inspector Barnaby stories by Caroline Graham and, as the name suggests, deals with murders in the fictional county of Midsomer and it’s county town of Causton, where the Barnaby characters and their team is based.
. -. -.. . .- …- — — ..- .-.
Endeavour, although produced and broadcast well after the Inspector Morse series, is actually the prequel to Morse. Endeavour being Morse at the start of his police career. Morse, for reasons I’ll mention later, preferred to be known only by his surname.
The programme, Endeavour, despite being discreet episodes within it’s several series, has to follow — and explain — much of the character that became a feature of the Inspector Morse series. For example, Morse’s taste for beer, also his bachelor status, amongst others.
Endeavour is set in the period from 1965 to 1972 and the first series was broadcast in 2013.
1987–2000
Inspector Morse — the first series broadcast in 1987 and set in Oxford of that date, comprised 33 two hour episodes in the series. It was based on the Colin Dexter books of the same name. Dexter actually made small cameo appearances in many of the episodes.
Morse, as with the Barnabys in Midsomer Murders, was assisted by a sergeant — Lewis — who later featured in his own detective series after Morse died and having been promoted to Inspector.
Lewis only discovered, late in the series, that his boss only liked to be known as Morse because he was embarrassed by his given name of Endeavour — hence the name of the prequal series.
Get David A Hughes’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
It’s amusing, now, to watch the very dated reactions to the most ordinary occurrences of the mid 1980s. For example, Lewis expressing surprise at the cost of a couple of pints of beer — £1.98, which might just buy a whisky glassful of beer these days! Old technology — landline phones with big dials, telephone boxes, no mobiles, scarcity of CCTV cameras and computers, no internet or World Wide Web.
Add to the technology of the day, the old cars that would today be highly collectable classic vehicles and these programmes become even more attractive to me.
Yet the acting and storylines are still compelling.
Lewis, a Welshman in Dexter’s books, is well portrayed as a Geordie in the TV series and Kevin Whateley carries this well when he supersedes his superior after Morse dies.
Now we come to the ubiquitous nature of the crimes in each of these programmes.
Murder.
All of them, at some stage, have murders. However, Morse is squeamish and avoids blood and guts, so not so much, then, is shown in any episode.
Less overt displays of violence
The same is true of each of these — and the other, unmentioned, titles I alluded to earlier. Despite it’s title, Midsomer Murders rarely, if ever, shows graphically detailed scenes of stabbings or shootings. No blood and guts flying everywhere as, no doubt, would happen in reality.
It’s also true of the other programmes mentioned. Occasionally a body may be seen, lying on a bed, in a chair or the floor with a certain amount of the red-stuff splashed about but that’s usually about as much as one can expect.
The rest is ‘left to one’s imagination’ — and I appreciate that.
Not like many of today’s equivalent crime dramas, where there is a lot (too much, in my opinion) of detailed and graphic depiction of violence and its effects on the human body.
This is also true of the other programmes I’ve talked about here. Dead bodies, yes. The occasional actual murder, yes. Often a poisoning, rather than a stabbing or shooting, and without all the gory blood and guts being splattered across walls and floors.
I confess, I have an aversion to what I consider to be unnecessarily detailed depiction of extreme violence, no matter how accurate it might be. I prefer to allow my imagination to fill in where I don’t need to see what effect a shot-gun would have on a head at close quarters, or a nine inch blade on someone’s neck, let alone a .45 calibre hand-gun on any part of a human’s body.
The fifteen years of the ‘Wild West’
Yes, that’s about all it was, and I understand that John Wayne westerns were wholly inaccurate in their depiction of a shooting — someone falling slowly to the ground, clutching their unbloodied chest and moaning, gently, about the injustice of it all.
I’d rather not see any depiction of violence at all, but do appreciate that these TV and film dramas have a fascination for almost everyone. It’s just that my threshold of acceptable viewing does not include too much graphic detail of violent death.
Morse, Lewis, Endeavour — in broadcast order. Endeavour, Morse then Lewis in setting order, will continue to attract me to TV viewing. Midsomer Murders and many other such crime dramas will also have their place in my list of regular viewing.
A couple of pints of blood, suggestively dripped on the ground over ten or twelve episodes is enough for me. I don’t want to see any of it spurting from severed jugulars or blasted from the backs of bodies to dribble down heavy velvet curtains or over the kitchen table.
Let’s keep it clean and pretend that it doesn’t happen at all.
