the ep i watched last night (s3 e2: "the last enemy") starts well enough -- it's abt ambition, petty jealousy, power and the dynamics of academia, political and sexual -- and rolls along, with various business-like cameos from well known faces (inc barry "van der valk" foster and michael "percy alleline" adlridge, the latter morse's tutor once upon a time (so we also get a glimpse of what academia thought of morse (had great potential, ruinously distracted -- by love of course). but it ends as they too often do with a big splurge of infodump backstory fulling in all the details
we've also now had two glimpses of how morse interweaves his love of music -- which is deep and very genuine, and which i find extremely irritating -- with his dating: an earlier ep when he tells grayling russell that he likes music, she says "oh! jazz?" and her replies (plaintively but also irritated) "music!"
then in this one he has a meal with a lady-of-interest (not dr russell) which takes place in a cheerily noisy and bustling jamaican eatery full of children and reggae and dreadlocked waiters. reggae is also not his thing viewers will be startled to discover
his issue of course is he uses taste as a social filter and an emotinal maginot line and then finds himself stranded miles distant from those he's drawn to: while all the choirs he's in are immediately shadowed by the corpses as they stack up lol
― mark s, Thursday, 3 August 2023 16:10 (nine months ago) link
his love of music -- which is deep and very genuine, and which i find extremely irritating
New board description for ILM?
― omar little, Thursday, 3 August 2023 16:29 (nine months ago) link
lol omar
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Thursday, 3 August 2023 16:41 (nine months ago) link
The music thing is interesting. A lot of intellectual snobbery tics are cheap and reflexive - he's the scholarship boy desperate to prove his worth to social betters who will never give a shit and he can't/won't see this, and it's curdled him something rotten - but irrespective of what he affects not to like you're right mark, his love for what he does like is genuine and unaffected
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 August 2023 16:52 (nine months ago) link
he surrounds himself in it like an impenetrable armour
― mark s, Thursday, 3 August 2023 17:13 (nine months ago) link
kinda wish ppl called me "pagan" tbh
― mark s, Thursday, 3 August 2023 17:15 (nine months ago) link
Yeah it's quite a cool nickname if you're not poor self-conscious Endeavour
Is that the cricket team ep?
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 August 2023 17:34 (nine months ago) link
yes
― mark s, Thursday, 3 August 2023 17:34 (nine months ago) link
I do like in morse how p much every villain is completely unremarkable and banal. one of the early ones about a missing schoolgirl has a terrifically whiny head teacher basically killing someone because it was "intolerable" that she would try to tell him what to do with HIS school.think the only culprit I've been genuinely scared/creeped out by was the driving instructor one. and morse completely loses it during the entire episode persecuting the wrong guy.
― oscar bravo, Thursday, 3 August 2023 18:05 (nine months ago) link
When I was first watching them at the original broadcast date I used to argue that they nod to politics and conspiracy but the motives almost always end up being tawdry and personal. Don't know if I think that's good or bad now, but it's kind of good I guess. Law and Order often does a similar trick, the big motives are always supplanted by the small, sad motives
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 August 2023 18:22 (nine months ago) link
i'm only at no.10 right now but yes, so far i feel the Big Issues™️ have always been red herrings and it's actually at its best when everything is v small and crappy beer and ppl being dumb weasely shits
― mark s, Thursday, 3 August 2023 18:26 (nine months ago) link
"his love of music -- which is deep and very genuine, and which i find extremely irritating"
Wonder how much it maps to someone like Scruton (not someone I am ever likely to read on music).
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 4 August 2023 21:03 (nine months ago) link
that definitely falls under "background research i will NOT be undertaking as an adjunct to this rewatch"*
my kneejerk impression is that morse uses it as kind of full sensualist wash which can be relied on to protect him from an ugly stupid world: where scruton actually wheels out the analytic and structural dimensions of classical composition as proof of (and key prizes in) the Western Civilisational Achievement etc
however this is second- or even third-hand apprehension of content so i may be quite wrong
*i just rewatched the cricket episode and was mildly amused to note that the two paperbacks abt zen buddhism which briefly feature as plot points are two books i myself own -- welcome to the first items you could grab off the shelves in a bookshop in the 80s
― mark s, Saturday, 5 August 2023 09:14 (nine months ago) link
(adding: i found the cricket one p tiresome but it's probably the ep i've seen most often so the judgment isn't really fair maybe -- such comedy as it involves has become a little stale)
― mark s, Saturday, 5 August 2023 09:30 (nine months ago) link
there's some especially toe-curling Morse lechery iirc
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 5 August 2023 09:31 (nine months ago) link
haha yes he makes a move of his dead friend's wife a wee bit quick, and then she and a quite different lady-of-interest seem strangely into him for some reason -- and then we find their reasons and lewis has to kindly help him escape some of the toe-curling going public
he doesn't disgrace himself but i think he does humiliate himself
― mark s, Saturday, 5 August 2023 18:27 (nine months ago) link
s3 e4: The Secret of Bay 5B
in which grayling R sends signals (= pathologising in a scarlet evening dress! and for someone so um PERMANENTLY LORN, yr man almost entirely fails to recognise this lol
the tale itself is pleasingly low key and sad and grubby
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 17:30 (nine months ago) link
the next one stars one of my favourite extremely dislikeable (hence very busy) actors = george costigan
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 18:02 (nine months ago) link
Costigan is great, yeah, especially at playing sleazebags
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 8 August 2023 18:25 (nine months ago) link
funny given the tom wilkinson crossover that this ep has more or less the same plot as MICHAEL CLAYTON (2007)
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 19:32 (nine months ago) link
different emphasis on different elements maybe :|
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 20:03 (nine months ago) link
and then this next one's abt death by beer lol
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 20:17 (nine months ago) link
plot is a dorothy sayers knock-off (apart from the beer)
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 21:54 (nine months ago) link
(i generally find the rich-family-has-issues stories p hard going to be honest)
― mark s, Wednesday, 9 August 2023 09:23 (nine months ago) link
those story lines tend to play up the "Morse as embittered outsider" angle and they didn't need to keep doing it
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 09:27 (nine months ago) link
tbf the stories with more lower middle/working class characters at the centre tend to highlight how bad the writers and actors often were at covering that territory, but i enjoy seeing their version of the machinery hidden behind the Byzantine world of dons and poshos
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 09:29 (nine months ago) link
i've only read the first of the Morse books and it's probably enough for me - there's some grim stuff in Lewis's inner monologue especially - but it's interesting how much worse the book Morse is at passing as U and how much rougher around the edges he is
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 09:31 (nine months ago) link
meanwhile:
FOR GOD'S SAKE MORSE RUN, SHE'LL EAT YOUR WHOLE HEAD LIKE A PRAYING MANTIS pic.twitter.com/adYjsBpYZg— Je téléphone à la police (@je_police) May 27, 2023
― mark s, Wednesday, 9 August 2023 09:37 (nine months ago) link
i'd let her tbh
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 09:37 (nine months ago) link
but it's interesting how much worse the book Morse is at passing as U and how much rougher around the edges he is
Wonder if this is down to Thaw not wanting to play it as Jack Regan in Oxford
― van der gragt generator (Bananaman Begins), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 10:01 (nine months ago) link
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 bookmarkflaglink
Don't think it needs those stories. What I like is the level of bitterness that John Thaw is pretty good at playing up (I've never seen him in anything else so I don't know what his range is) throughout. You've got this cultured, wannabe academic playing an inspector but I don't know if I could imagine him as lower ranked officer. It's like he is a civil servant, just 'fast tracked' into this role.
Morse is a very odd confection, Oxford is full of reminders of this other life he could've led and did not. But he never left.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 9 August 2023 10:10 (nine months ago) link
that range in full:
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2551254876/vqvetz2g12aox7dkgo92_400x400.jpeg
― mark s, Wednesday, 9 August 2023 10:14 (nine months ago) link
Let's not forget...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Home_to_Roost.jpeg
― Continuous Two-Tone Warble (Tom D.), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 10:32 (nine months ago) link
Angry, embittered and indignant was definitely what John Thaw was best at.
― Continuous Two-Tone Warble (Tom D.), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 10:34 (nine months ago) link
He has a small role in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) - twenty years old, but already looking older:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-qNnatnvmyrgtAqRPb-0i26Ty8BAwcg5PdHKH9UASDiR0_RupwXHTTPOBpHaJ2TNxMZ2hm-UY0b9JlGIxQd601T4zgIb97oXamyq0XsPQSuP_b4juQcEHidoMsxGUqTmxnKH7vC4X08sL9nYnsf5nIg2yaCvDmnRtP92zj1P9ZjpxqdVHsaidyI4cng/s2147/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-20%20at%2011.22.41%20PM.jpeg
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 9 August 2023 10:47 (nine months ago) link
driven to distraction is abt misogyny in the motortrade and catching a serial killer: patrick malahide delivers a strongly nasty performance and they encounter several lesser creeps beside the killer, but the main team are just not themselves at all -- morse breaking regs all over the shop, lewis throwing strops abt this, strange, well ok strange is his normal self lol. prime suspect wasn't till the following year so i guess the relevant stakes weren't really been raised yet in terms of quotidian sexism on the force hobbling this kind of investigiation (inc.bringing in mary jo randle as a copper seconded precisely to deal with such matters, a role she took to the bill a couple of years later) -- but acknowledging that just leaves you thinking how much this ep doesn't get it. so it ends up an ugly oddity somehow -- tho apparently a popular one…
― mark s, Thursday, 10 August 2023 15:51 (nine months ago) link
the masons-mozart ep is extremely goofy; lewis's joy at being asked to use a computer is excellent stuff
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 16:20 (nine months ago) link
appreciate Morse having a nemesis who would've been used to death in post-HBO tv but not here thankfully
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Friday, 11 August 2023 16:41 (nine months ago) link
that's probably one of the reasons i got so into these shows, they're mercifully low on story arcs
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Friday, 11 August 2023 16:44 (nine months ago) link
great reveal when we see who it actually is lol
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 16:50 (nine months ago) link
morse: imperial phase
another character actor i enjoy tho without googling i remember him from late period Dennis Potter and i think he might have been the lad that ended up playing the Star Wars emperor?
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Friday, 11 August 2023 16:53 (nine months ago) link
my nemesis is none other than darth Icky
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 16:57 (nine months ago) link
hey, if Alec Guinness had no regrets then no wait
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Friday, 11 August 2023 16:58 (nine months ago) link
haha sam kelly unsurprisingly terrific as the ghostwriter-hack in "second time around"
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 17:47 (nine months ago) link
if you'd told me that 1962 John Thaw was a 52 year old man i wouldn't have disbelieved it for a second.
― omar little, Friday, 11 August 2023 18:09 (nine months ago) link
oddly enough he really reminds me in that photo of a close friend i had at college who died young: i never knew what he looked like at 30 let along 52 :|
not a connection i ever made before, it's the curly hair framing the forehead
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 19:47 (nine months ago) link
Are there any actual "good" episodes of Morse with a solid mystery, or at least solid narrative momentum, not just thesps yelling and crying and two-minute, single-camera shots of a Jaguar parking on a gravel path for atmos?
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 11 August 2023 21:20 (nine months ago) link
That might be an unfair remeberance, I speak as someone who remembers Morse as a ten-year-old who wished ITV still showed Magnum PI instead
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 11 August 2023 21:22 (nine months ago) link
ive just reached halfway in the rewatch (season five of eight) so im hesitant to be all grand-gesture "in conclusion" yet but i'd say that the stories so far are always solid-mystery-shaped without ever quite being classic solid mysteries, and that's bcz everyone involved is seizing on the opportunity to cram in other stuff: including settings and cute shots, opera joeks, being jampacked with off-the-ball hints for rewatch nerds with a pause button, stunt performances and cameos, topical social commentary, ageless wisdom™️, and the relentless comedy stylings of the morse&lewis duo…
result is that it swerves around a great deal tonally between eps and every ep is a bit of a mess one way and another. it can certainly be diverting -- more so than poirot, say, at least for me, which i always lose interest in, tho less than geraldine mcewan in goblin-mode -- but it is as often just exasperating: its ambitious notions flubbed and its many bids for bleak relevance outmanoevred (e.g. by frost, which is in some ways its smarter twin)
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 11:12 (nine months ago) link