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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight months ago) link
different emphasis on different elements maybe :|
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 20:03 (eight months ago) link
and then this next one's abt death by beer lol
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 20:17 (eight months ago) link
plot is a dorothy sayers knock-off (apart from the beer)
― mark s, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 21:54 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight months ago) link
i'd let her tbh
― you're a sick man, Buddy Rich (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 9 August 2023 09:37 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight months ago) link
great reveal when we see who it actually is lol
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 16:50 (eight 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 (eight months ago) link
my nemesis is none other than darth Icky
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 16:57 (eight 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 (eight months ago) link
haha sam kelly unsurprisingly terrific as the ghostwriter-hack in "second time around"
― mark s, Friday, 11 August 2023 17:47 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight 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 (eight months ago) link
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
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:15 (eight months ago) link
wait no, it's the fellow who takes *over* from the fellow darth vader chokes (too much morse-darkside crossover is confusing )
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:23 (eight months ago) link
"bit holier than thou" "she IS holier than thou lewis!"
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:28 (eight months ago) link
exchange is funny but could just as well have happpened in the other direction
― mark s, Saturday, 12 August 2023 17:30 (eight months ago) link
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…
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 13:02 (eight months ago) link
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
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 13:10 (eight months ago) link
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
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:47 (eight months ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/8HYNNeA.png
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:48 (eight months ago) link
better photo (not from morse):
https://www.regisautographs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Scan-68-e1570209156116.jpeg
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:54 (eight months ago) link
this entire thread is
choice incomprehensible posts from britisher threads
for me
― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Sunday, 13 August 2023 16:57 (eight months ago) link
x-postShe looks a bit like Jiddu Krishnamurti in the ‘better photo’.
― Dr Drudge (Bob Six), Sunday, 13 August 2023 17:36 (eight months ago) link
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)
― mark s, Sunday, 13 August 2023 18:11 (eight months ago) link