TS: Lewis vs Morse

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?

my nemesis is none other than darth Icky

hey, if Alec Guinness had no regrets then no wait

haha sam kelly unsurprisingly terrific as the ghostwriter-hack in "second time around"

if you'd told me that 1962 John Thaw was a 52 year old man i wouldn't have disbelieved it for a second.

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

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?

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

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)

watched: the one with child murder, sam kelly, that fellow darth vader chokes as a fiery copper morse dislikes
watching: the one with women vicars and a miracle slimming product

wait no, it's the fellow who takes *over* from the fellow darth vader chokes (too much morse-darkside crossover is confusing )

"bit holier than thou"
"she IS holier than thou lewis!"

exchange is funny but could just as well have happpened in the other direction

the women vicars ep is probably the one i've enjoyed the most so far -- the clash of values (crusty trad weirdos vs the politically energetic, blended into a plot abt a dodgy think-thin cult) hovers between nicely serious and satire, and if the slimming stuff wd probably be handled a little more delicately today it still basically has its heart in the right place. also morse probably gets a first-date um sleepover w/zoe wanamaker (tho it's careful to keep the notion deniable) and a cheroot-smoking and be-cassocked maggie o'neill at one point does an effervescent cartwheel across the college lawn, which was i suspect unscripted…

the pacing and tonal movement both work well -- for once it gets all its various content- and form-ducks in a row. the one misstep is maybe the title (fat chance), which is a bit lazily brutal and also IMO misleading

eileen way as mrs papas in greeks bearing gifts -- none more greeek but she was born in new malden

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2OfLd9WwAAXDXP?format=jpg

https://i.imgur.com/8HYNNeA.png

better photo (not from morse):

https://www.regisautographs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Scan-68-e1570209156116.jpeg

this entire thread is

choice incomprehensible posts from britisher threads

for me

x-post

She looks a bit like Jiddu Krishnamurti in the ‘better photo’.

anyway for sleeve's sake this one is abt richard and judy, taped bouzouki music in crappy restaurants and reconstructed triremes, and i competely forgot to talk abt the one before, which is abt art and fakes

(and they're both good: we have entered a strong stretch)

the bouzouki one has a bit of a silly ending

the ep with marmalade atkins and martin clunes is annoying garbage

(and i've missed some out that i watched)

i will do a catch-up when it's less hot and i can think

alun armstrong as a "senior copper who's an idiot" role, which (a) makes no sense (the role doesn't add up) and (b) is in any case a complete waste of armstrong >:(

"are you always so churlish inspector?"

GOOD QUESTION

everyone enunciating very poshly this ep (largely set in a prison): everyone except lewis but INCLUDING SEAN BEAN

is phil davis in that one?

yup in fact it is jampacked with well known faces

(PD also speaks posh-ish; tbf jim broadbent maintains a mild non-posh inflection alongside lewis)

watching the satanism ep and morse is being even more insufferably arsey than usual telling ppl who staff a hospital for the criminally insane what their job is

ok possibly "not letting one of the criminally insane escape" is a part of their job they just effed up but

can't tell if keith allen is deftly fashioning a character or thinks that's how ppl actually say "shaman" and "charlatan"

as it's a bank holiday i'm subjecting myself to an endeavour X[

lol it's trying to be le carré

plus there's a highly unconvincing sidestory abt race and gangs and voodoo

back at the satanist morse story: keith allen in a bushy fake moustache sat outside a pub supping a beer and reading the london a-z like a novel

this is not a good episode

i never enjoyed that episode, it feels badly constructed as well as silly

lol i hadn't even got to the wildly silly scene

https://www.filmtipps.at/kritiken/The_Devil_rides_out/thumbs/The_Devil_rides_out_2.jpg

gwladys probert

actress welshing it up to the max

show always improved when the pathologist is
(a) a woman (dr hobson) who
(b) doesn't take morse's ridiculous shit

(max was also good, for the same reason)

even so the plot-tic that morse is the only faintly adequate copper in the country remains annoying

lol they shd have called this show HECATOMB

show always improved when the pathologist is
(a) a woman (dr hobson) who
(b) doesn't take morse's ridiculous shit

(max was also good, for the same reason)

― mark s, Friday, 1 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I would to re-watch more but this makes me realise the only characters that took no shit were the 'educated' sorts.

i imagine it's different in the original books but there's not really a coherent throughline of class politics or anything else in the show: even the way long-term characters interact swerves just wildly between episodes

but yes it is almost entirely about chaos and competition within the professional layers

it's just funnier when he doesn't get his way

sir clixby bream

(tremendous slimy performance from richard briers)

oh dear i've reached the ep that is set in victorian oxford which morse is solving while in a narcotic dream in a hospital bed

maybe it will not be terrible

i have bad news

OMG, never even knew such a ridiculous thing existed