TS: Lewis vs Morse

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

i have a very vague memory of something like this occurring in a book-detective series -- like a break from the present to dig into the past -- where it maybe worked a bit better? but i can't remember which detective so making the comparison is a bit bogus really

the daughter of time?

doesn’t work that well in that tbh.

haven't read it and not what i had in mind -- if i had anything at all -- but yes!

(lewis sat this one out btw)

(he made the right decision)

actually what i might be thinking of is a tv reinvestigation of the ripper murders which i saw in 1973: the faces fronting it were barlow and watt (stratford johns and frank windsor) of z cars and then softly softly

i remember my dad having to explain to me what "poses plastique" were, something abt a male brothel (i don't recall why this was relevant; maybe he didn't explain that)

anyway it's 50 years since i saw that but i think it was better than this is

it was a half season of shite in the sopranos is what i remember

last ever ep

morse: "you know you really should persevere with wagner, lewis, it's about IMPORTANT THINGS"

lewis going off when the woman suspect says "Morse will understand" That's INSPECTOR Morse.

at least he had strange with him when he went

so i started watching endeavour from the start bcz in the evening after a day's work i am always fatigued ftb beta blockers and demanding TV is no longer for me :(

mostly it sucks MIGHTILY (very badly written) but in this ep (no 3 in all: rocket) YUNG MORSE caused the girl he's currently interested in laugh when he called a disco a "pop dancing club" (ep set in 1965) -- that was actually a good line and a good exchange, where the anachronism is the great man's callow error not the scriptwriter's

One I saw was set the week of the 1966 world cup final and I peaced out pretty quick

"Would you bring Greaves back into the side Morse?" fuck off

Morse would refuse to watch because Ramsey wasn't playing wingers.

2 ("fugue") was abt a serial killer playing fiendish games in codes that only an advanced musical brain could ever crack ("every good boy deserves favour")

i don't mind shaun evans -- very watchable -- but so far i hate his oh-i-just-cracked-this scene and pray it is not going to be a fixture

academic misuses "refute" in 1965* -- not very likely but might have happened?
an angry morse not jumping scornfuly on the solecism -- would absolutely not have happened lol

*it's not a synonym for "deny": to refute you must supply the proof

oh-i-just-cracked-this scene and pray it is not going to be a fixture

oh no

(very dislikeable) character mentions the new left review while teasing morse (it's 1966 so ilx's beloved perry anderson is editor) #onethread

this is the silliest stuff

now watching the world cup ep: it also features chopin and heraldry plus a haunted girls school that's very picnic at hanging rock when it's not harry potter

getting unrelated topics to clash fruitfully is a morsey thing tho i think it fails at this more often than it succeeds and i don't have high hopes for this

scooby-doo-ass garbage

gotta hand it to em, sway was a pretty good ep, maybe it's finding its feet!

(i mean still p silly in some ways, but also quite affecting and the anachronism kept in check for a change)

(i like the one-word titles btw, that's a nice tic)

deems said this show got better and in s3 it has, which is nice

is there another drama which wd open with a close-up of a man deploying MOLE TRAPS on a well kept lawn, i think not

the mole trap man is in fact lozza's dad :|

a hathaway

ok that was the silliest story i have ever watched, mole traps or no mole traps

Do you think Fox's breakdown into whatever he is now was precipitated by expecting to replace Kevin Whateley as the main guy in the franchise and they're all like, lol no, we're gonna do heartbeat morse instead

it can't have helped that they included his character's dad as a completely inconsequential walk-on character (who doesn't even get to be a red herring)

history of Loz's life tbf

this record is ok but it's no "l'amour"

https://head-records.bandcamp.com/album/beliefs-destroyer

i know, i haven't thought of "l'amour" in about a decade either

I bet it's better than this...

https://laurencefox.bandcamp.com/album/a-grief-observed

... OMG I just listened to it!

this is the stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41KgNJ9qGDI

"next time you see my name it'll be on page one!"

things not say say on endeavour

the ep that combines a mary whitehouse-alike with a pink floyd-alike and a gay news-alike* (plus a simon dee-alike) has a moment where morse is harrumphing abt rock criticism

my usual beef: huge surges of anachronism poorly steered thru but lol his actual crit (of a mode of interviewing and writing that didn't really exist yet in 1967) is not inaccurate! though its problems go more to the difficulties of self-taight musicians getting across to non-musicians how music gets collectively put together, than to the brainlessness he prefers to think it (never change lonely grumpy high-culture dude, yr instincts are good but their expressive framework is terrible)

*it compresses the gay news prosecution of 1977 (for blasphemy) into the oz prosecution of 1970 (for obscenity)

decriminalisation only took place in 1967; gay news was in fact founded in 1972 and an equivalent would hardly have needed a mary whitehouse-alike to get it shut it down five years earlier

how much does all this matter (besides driving me the actual person watching very bonkers)?

sylvestra le touzel is p good as the whitehouse-alike lady tho -- she does the accent as a full thatcher, which is cheeky but nevertheless effective