The best recurring character in the series was Max. I was sorry to see him go at the end of the second series. He came across as a genuinely smart guy who had Morse's number. Lewis was also great. Morse remains consistently pretentious throughout, but the endearing rough edges to his character seen in earlier episodes were smoothed off in later series and he became a very dull politically correct nonentity.My ratings are: Series 1: 8.7; Series 2: 9.0; Series 3: 8.0; Series 4: 8.0; Series 5: 5.6; Series 6: 5.8; Series 7: 5.0; I shan't be bothering with the remaining episodes.My favourite episodes: The Wolvercote Tongue, The Settling of the Sun, The Secret of Bay 5B, Masonic Mysteries and Dead on Time.The episodes I disliked: Fat Chance, Happy Families, Cherubim & Seraphim, The Day of the Devil and Twilight of the Gods.

I never really followed Morse on TV, but was aware of how highly it was regarded, so I recently purchased the whole series on DVD to check it out for myself. Having watched half-a-dozen episodes it is time a few preliminary observations.The series was given top production values. Each episode was treated as a near-cinema quality stand-alone TV movie. They were all shot on film, with a lot of location shooting and multiple camera set-ups for each scene. The shows are also a role call of top-notch British actors (including several that later became much better known). Leading the way are John Thaw and Kevin Whately, who are both excellent. The first season only had three episodes. I see this increased to four episodes for several subsequent seasons before settling down to just one show a season. Morse certainly wanted to be taken seriously as a prestige production.Personally, I am still waiting to be impressed.For one thing, I am having trouble with the overall tone of the stories. Stylistically, they are located at the gritty, 'police procedural' end of the 'whodunit' spectrum, but this is belied by Morse's complete disregard for any procedure, or even the law itself. Moreover, the convoluted and sometimes implausible plots, often strewn with corpses, place it right in the middle of Agatha Christie territory. In 'Service of all the Dead' we are asked to believe that the Vicar, the church warden, his wife and the church organist, all conspired to kill the vicar's brother and that one of them turned out to be a psychopath intent on killing all his co-conspirators: that is a big 'ask'.I am finding this clash between the general approach and the actual subject matter a bit uncomfortable.Nor am I convinced by the character of Morse himself. This grumpy snob is disillusioned and world-weary, but for no obvious reason. He trails from pub to pub, constantly soaking up alcohol and jumping into his car with no fear of ever being breathalysed. It is implied that he has a real problem with drink, verging on alcoholism (one character actually says: "aren't you the policemen that drinks?") but we never actually see him drunk or hung-over. In several of these early stories he becomes romantically involved with one of the people in the case without regard to how this could compromise the investigation or any legal proceedings that might follow. He is also meant to be more fallible than the classic detectives were: he is often wrong in his reading of the situation. However, this fallibility seems ladled on to the stories rather than being integral to them. Morse jumps to conclusions on minimal evidence and is constantly blurting out his unfounded suspicions, making the Police liable for legal action. In one episode he actually arrests the wrong man.The stories themselves are told in an arch, elliptical and somewhat pretentious way that makes them more difficult to follow than is strictly necessary. For example, in The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn the crucial final revelation fell flat and left me puzzled, so I had to go back to re-view the initial scene (which was interspersed with credits) in order to fully make sense of it. The stories tend to jump from one cryptic interrogation to another without rhyme of reason. For example, a character reveals something important which demands an immediate follow-up, but instead Morse abruptly terminates the interrogation and moves randomly on to something else.This choppiness carries over into the way individual scenes are written and staged. They are often broken into tiny slivers, dispersed over different locations. Morse and Lewis start a discussion in a pub. We then cut to an exterior of the car park where Morse asks Lewis a question. He then walks away as Lewis shouts his answer at his retreating back. Morse then gets into his car, winds down the window and delivers his comeback. This sort of fragmented structure is typical of the whole series and seems to be a deliberate house style, imposed on all the different writers and directors that worked on the series.The stories themselves obviously vary in quality, but none has yet really grabbed and baffled me and the eventual resolution of the mysteries has generally left me underwhelmed. They are as convoluted as the artificial puzzles of the Golden Age of crime writing, but not as clever or intriguing as, for example, the best of the Christies. I am reluctant to judge Colin Dexter on the basis of TV adaptations of his work, but I seriously doubt that he is in the same class as one of the modern 'greats' like Ruth Rendell.These are only my first impressions, based on a handful of early episodes, and they may yet change as the series evolves over the years and I become more accustomed to its distinctive style and tone. If this happens, I will happily acknowledge it in a subscript to this review.However, at this stage, Inspector Morse seems to me to be a classic example of the triumph of style over content.PS: One footnote to that last assessment is that the sumptuous look of the series is undermined by a poor DVD transcription, which gives the cinematography an unpleasant, grainy look.PPS: I did get used to it, and I don't regret watching all the episodes. The series became less quirky and less jumpy as it went on, but also more formulaic (see the devastatingly accurate account by 'combatreview').

After following Inspector Morse as a teen and even now after watching episodes again again, I still find myself taken with how well the programme was devised, written, produced, and acted - every time I watch an episode I take a fresh view on how good it was and is. I've come across a website which is the 'Official' site for all fans of this incredible drama - http://www.morsetv.com - it really is a site all those who want to find out that little bit more about the programme and man 'Morse'. There is loads of information with interesting video clip insights from John Thaw, Kevin Whately, Colin Dexter and Ted Childs about the characters from their own personal perspective - this is a great site, highly recommended.

This is kind of a spoiler, I suppose... because basically every episode goes like this:Morse: "Shut up Lewis, you're from Liverpool and don't understand about clever things, like musical snobbery."Lewis: "That's right sir, I'm just a poor scouser, but can I point out something completely obvious so that you can look pained and then realise I've got a point, in my simple working class way?"Morse: "If you must Lewis, but I have a large collection of old recordings of Maria Callas going la la la in French, singing about cigarette factories and traditional Spanish cruelty to animals, so naturally I'm not going to listen."Lewis: "But surely sir, the murderer is the famous guest actor with a role in the story inversely proportional to their position on the cast list?"Morse: "Shut up Lewis. Oh, hello Inspector Strange. I'm a detective with a 100% clear-up rate (better than Sherlock Holmes, in fact) and yet you're still always grumpy with me, and behave like I'm an amateur in need of your advice. And that name's a bit dodgy, this isn't a Dickens novel you know."Strange: "You're Getting Too Involved Morse"Morose: "Don't I always. After all, I've just met an attractive middle-aged woman that I'm going to make a slightly charmless and old-fashioned move on, without realizing that naturally this means she will either be a murderer, or be murdered, within the next 35 minutes, or just tell me to clear off for being such an abrasive old meany. Fortunately Oxford has an unlimited supply of middle-aged opera-loving attractive single women. Or is it Cambridge? I can never remember. Oh well, whatever. Inspector Morse, Thames Valley CID. Shut up Lewis. Let's go down the pub so that we can get more sponsorship from the Brewers."It's Bergerac with Middle-Class Pretensions, basically.