#inspector lewis
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 18
Kevin Whately has played Robbie Lewis since 1987, which is an amazing longevity for a fictional character to be played by the same actor. Sergeant Lewis was happy-go-lucky and clever, loyally rounding off Morse’s edges and taking his abuse with (mostly) good humour. Not only did Lewis endure Morse’s barbs, but he also bore the brunt of the physical blows in those days. Morse once remarks that Lewis’ head is like an anvil.
Promised Land- the Australia episode- is a particularly revealing episode for Sergeant Lewis. He is happy to take in local music whilst Morse complains that he needs to listen to his opera cassette. It is here that we learn his name- Robert, but my friends call me Robbie- as he gains the trust of the missing witness’ wife (another sprig of Morsenip). While Morse’s way is somewhat seductive, Lewis genuinely puts people at ease to get them to open up to him. Lewis- now Robbie - reads to the family’s children as he eavesdrops on Morsenip’s conversation with her missing husband. He later explains to the local sheriff how much his wife means to him. It is obvious that he would rather be home with his family. We were treated to other shards of Robbie’s family life over the course of Morse as they splintered off of whatever case was dragging Sergeant Lewis away from home.
When Robbie is an inspector in his own right with his kids grown and flown, we see none of Morse’s ego in the humble but wise Inspector Lewis. No longer happy-go-lucky but resilient, Lewis perseveres after having lost his mentor and his wife in about a year’s time. Lewis has matured over the years but maintains his eternal boyish grin and something of his innocence. When a tipsy Hobson is trying to interest him in a back room poker game at her birthday party, he responds that he used to play cribbage with his gran. It is a prime example of the way that Lewis shares his wisdom while being completely oblivious. As Innocent once said as he was taking time to have a think, Robbie makes her nervous when he does that inscrutable thing. But she is (nearly) always pleased with the results.
We learn as Robbie is becoming a grandfather that his own father died when he was about the same age. That, combined with the untimely losses of Morse and Val, explains Robbie’s fatalistic tendencies, wanting to forgo retirement to work until the end of his days. He may have started a new chapter with Laura, but he doesn’t seem to believe in his own happy ending. Laura and James still have some work to do to save Robbie from himself.
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 17
“Is this where the Hobbits quaffed their ale?” Hathaway inquires facetiously about the Eagle and Child pub where the Inklings gathered. Robbie, for one, is not interested in anymore flipping elves, but he does like to have a drink at the pub whenever he needs to think like Morse. Or unwind at the end of a case. Or watch a football game on a stupid sized telly. Any reason, really, will do for Lewis to go to the pub. It’s a way for the bachelor to get out of his flat and do the social-yet-alone thing that Lewis incarnates. Back in the day, Lewis was relegated to orange juice while buying Morse’s pints, but as an Inspector he gleefully tells Hathaway at the end of their first case together, “Mine’s a pint; you’re driving!” It does seem that James and Robbie take turns buying the rounds, but Morse’s legacy lives on in Laura who offers to buy Robbie a drink but doesn’t actually have any cash.
There are already several Lewis drinking games out there for you to look up and enjoy. Here is the Muffinzelda family version, so grab your orange juice and fire up your favorite Lewis episode. Drink whenever…
-A corpse is discovered
-Colin Dexter makes a cameo appearance
-Someone makes a literary reference
-An Oxford don (or other professor type) is acting imperious
-There is a new way of referencing Val’s death. Picture her in an orange parka and yell, “oh my God they killed Val! You bastards!” Then drink.
-The CCTV has failed for some reason
-Hathaway sasses Lewis
-Lewis fails to pick up on one of Hobson’s flirtatious cues
-Innocent gets upset over the course of an investigation
-Hobson or Innocent ask Lewis if Hathaway is OK
-Lewis and Hathaway go to a pub
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 16, or the Many Foils of Robbie Lewis, part 3.
Only one of Robbie Lewis’ foils was irritating enough to be a recurring character: DI Alan Peterson! Peterson is a pragmatic detective who likes to approach a situation with the armed response team. He’s the kind of guy to leap out of his seat as the force of law and order when one of those Oxford lectures gets tense.
After an initial encounter with Peterson, Hathaway asks about Lewis in his younger days. “Did it ever appeal to you, the actionny side of things- running and fighting and such?” Lewis was never too excited by all that. “I ran a bit as a young copper, shouted ‘oy you,’ sometimes quite loudly.” Lewis takes a more measured approach and ends up saving Peterson’s mission.
Lewis may have caught the bad guy, but it seems for a while that Peterson might get the girl. “What does she see in Action Man anyway?” Hathaway asks Lewis when they learn that Hobson was at that rowdy lecture with Peterson. Peterson is known for interrupting Robbie and Laura’s moments together, oblivious to the fact that Robbie is seething with jealousy. At long last, Laura puts Robbie out of his misery by explaining that although Peterson wants to take her out to dinner, it will never happen because he isn’t her type. It is a not-so-subtle hint that Laura’s type is the dependable, easygoing sort, preferably with a Geordie accent.
Alphabetical reasons to love Lewis, day 15
The city of dreaming spires has so many iconic places and vistas that it is far more profound than a usual theatrical set and setting. The city’s literary landscape is well represented of course; CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll are both Lewises, after all! But Oxford itself is a star of the show in its own right.
Robbie, James, and Laura (note the Oxford comma!) have hashed out countless theories of whodunit at a café in front of the Radcliffe Camera or at a pub overlooking the Thames. Together, they’ve investigated a body in the Bodleian, shrunken heads at the Natural History Museum, art exhibits at the Ashmolean (also at the Ashmolean: a wedding where the groom is killed for almost no reason), and the Signature of All Things at the Botanic Garden. There have been drinks and suspects galore at the Randolph, not to mention the countless churches and colleges. Port Meadow almost became a victim itself to a housing development scheme! And when Hathaway speaks about what he loves in life, he cites nothing more than the bells of Oxford.
Colin Dexter often named minor characters for his novels after streets in Summertown- including Hobson Road. (Morse and Lewis themselves were named after crossword creators.)
Personally, I have only visited this gorgeous city once; it was after Morse but before Lewis, so I didn’t fully appreciate the scenery at the time. But I hear that the Morse/Lewis/Endeavour tours and pub crawl are well worth the trip if you have the chance!
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 14
“No keks?” Lewis asks Hobson, regarding a corpse. “Ah, you can take the lad out of Newcastle…” she responds. How did a copper from Newcastle end up in Oxford? Robbie met his wife at a Midnight Addiction concert, and he followed her “down south.” Young Robbie must have gotten into some interesting adventures in uniform- he admits to Morse trying cannabis, and he tells the photographer of racy snaps that she can’t shock him because he did 3 years in vice back in Newcastle. (Though that last part is hard to believe given how modestly Lewis handles any “funny business” on the job.) Still, Robbie remembers Newcastle as a simpler place, one that wouldn’t have offices of the gossip mongering website Barker.biz. “Is that where you’re from?” asks employee Briony. “For me sins,” he responds.
Robbie is an outsider in erudite Oxford with its standard pronunciation as backdrop for Robbie’s striking Geordie accent. He uses that to his advantage; suspects often underestimate him at first glance. Despite not fitting in with the university set, Robbie has made Oxford his home; he tells Nicky Turnbull that he hasn’t been back to Newcastle in fifteen years, not since his uncle Harry’s funeral. (I wonder if there are reasons why…) Even if he hasn’t gone home in quite some time, since well before his wife’s death, he does feel the duty to defend his hometown. “Steady, no slandering the Northeast,” he warns DI Peterson. (Though we all know that he was really being territorial over Hobson, not his home turf.)
Though in the later seasons, Robbie seems to have traded his beer for Laura’s wine, Robbie seems most at home when sitting on his couch watching ‘the best telly in years’ with a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale.
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 13
*the last sentence of this post has a spoiler for final episode*
–
“You care about him, don’t you?” Hobson asks Lewis, who has inquired about Morse’s failing health. Robbie says nothing, but the look is plain on his face. “He doesn’t make it easy.” Hobson responds in the Remorseful Day. Indeed, this letter is the hardest to write because of the shear enormity of Morse! He was Lewis’ unyielding task-master and yet, a very real affection developed between them. Morse even introduces Lewis to his family- a half-sister and her brood. Lewis becomes a repository for Morse’s secrets: his name as well as the childhood anguish that caused him to contemplate suicide. “Get me Lewis!” Morse once bellowed from a jail cell, as his sergeant was the only one he could trust. Morse had a notoriously week stomach and acrophobia, so Lewis was his eyes when it came to grizzly corpses or chasing suspects amidst the dreaming spires. Never squeamish around a corpse, Lewis even gives Morse a gentle kiss on the forehead after the latter has passed away.
As Innocent noted regarding Morse, “that man has a lot to answer for,” and it’s true; Lewis was never as cruel to Hathaway as Morse was to him. In the beginning of Lewis, we were inundated with references to Morse from the Jaguar that nearly ran Robbie down at the airport to the now senior Morsenips whom Robbie encountered on various cases. But Morse’s real legacy is music- he has a scholarship for young musicians in his name, and Robbie has kept some of his treasured records. Lewis even investigates a case in which an East German man may have been killed as a spy simply for sharing Wagner records with Morse.
Robbie learned a lot from Morse, including his fatalistic work habits. The most poignant scene of the final episode is when Hobson tearfully lets Lewis go be brilliant, just like Morse.
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 12
Our Lyn is one of the few links that we see to Robbie’s past over the course of the Lewis series. Though her voice is only heard once on Robbie’s answering machine, his one-sided phone calls with his daughter are the tender pulse of the show. (These calls are often cut or truncated in the PBS broadcast versions, curse you, PBS!) Robbie always worries about his daughter, whether she is a teenage girl playing her music too loud or a grown woman with a bairn of her own.
In Cherubim and Seraphim, Lyn Lewis is played by a young actress whose name is Cinnamon Bone. (Mr. Muffinzelda informs me that this would be the tastiest porno name ever. I responded that I believe a Cinnamon Bone is a churro.)
In the days of Lewis, she has become a nurse and moved to Manchester. When Robbie begins to seriously contemplate retirement, it is because Lyn is expecting. She tries to persuade him to move to Manchester, but he demurs, intrinsically linked to policing in Oxford. He eventually decides to chuck it when he realizes that his grandson is growing up a stranger. But when we find Robbie a year later attempting to build a canoe, he is all too quick to trade in his wood glue for a bullet proof vest. We can only hope that Robbie eventually took grandson Jack out in that canoe!
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 11
Lewis’ son appears several times in Morse, but he is never actually named. He is always credited as “Lewis’ son.” However, in the promotional photos included with the UK DVD for Death is Now my Neighbour, there is a picture of father and son captioned Robbie and Ken Lewis. (This information came to me from CrazyMaryT some time ago- thank you!) There is some misinformation out there on Robbie’s Wikipedia page where his son is listed as Patrick. This is false. It happens at least twice in Lewis where Robbie calls his daughter and says, “hi, pet, it’s your dad.” This has been mistaken for ‘Pat,’ but the subtitles confirm that it is ‘pet,’ and the context also indicates that he is talking to his daughter, Lyn. Anyway, as I said, young Lewis is never actually named in primary sources, but I am going with the promotional photo that calls him Ken. Ken would make sense as a name because it would pay homage to Kenny McBain, Morse producer who died of Hodgkin’s Disease during the show’s run. (And I like to picture him as the Simpson’s Ranier Wolfcastle playing McBain. But I digress…) (And another aside to my fanfic friends, you can call Lewis’ son whatever the heck you want- it’s your story!)
In the days of Morse, we saw Ken as a sweet little boy who played cricket with Lewis in the yard and helped his dad study for his inspector’s exam. By the later series, however, Ken becomes a surly teen who makes his French teacher cry. And when Robbie complains that he had to take off work to meet with the teacher, Ken lets his father know in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t respect his father for taking orders from Morse.
Poor Robbie; all we know of Ken from Lewis’pilot episode is that he’s gone to Australia to find himself. Robbie occasionally mentions that he hasa son in Lewis, but he never gives any detail. Indeed, one of the things that irks me most about the final series of Lewis is that after years Robbie of prattling on about random family members to Morse, suddenly everyone has a family except Robbie. James’ family is center stage, and we learn of Laura’s niece in New Zealand. But where is Robbie’s son? Still in Australia? What a pity that we never got to see more of Robbie’s kids in his own series.
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 10!
James Hathaway: the world-music playing, rowing (Attaway Hathaway!), public-school-cheek-meets-lofty-Cambridge cleverclogs is the perfect complement to the down to Earth Lewis. Hathaway is The Gold Standard in Angsty, Priesty Detectives. (Even the New York Times said in their review of Granchester that Sidney Beckett is no Hathaway.) Buzzfeed’s list of the PBS’s hottest hunks placed Laurence Fox’s Hathaway at #1. “And he knows Latin too!” squeaked Liv Nash, who like the rest of us, has a hard time containing herself where Hathaway is concerned.
James quipped to Robbie in the pilot that he was too frivolous to be a priest, but we realize later that he could not reconcile his faith in God with the teachings of the church that led his gay friend Will to commit suicide. Unfortunately, that was not the beginning of James’ existential flu. He grew up on the Mortmaigne estate as the son of the groundskeeper. Robbie would come to learn the awful truth that children on the estate- possibly including James- were molested by the Lord of the manor, Augustus Mortmaigne. Indeed, Robbie knows James so well that he knows when James isn’t really on holiday but instead is roped into do-goodery with his churchy pals. I was surprised that Lewis never knew about his sister, Nell, a new character in series 9. (Nope, I didn’t buy that part at all.)
I tend to believe that Robbie and James’ relationship is a father/son type bro-mance, but certainly the people who ship them romantically are not imagining it either. One of the best scenes of the series is where the headmaster of the school they are investigating in Expiation thinks they are a same sex couple seeking to enroll their child. Hathaway says, “darling, I think we should explain…” Robbie even admits half-jokingly that in his retirement he and James could sail away on a dinghy together, except that James is too young. In any event, Laurence Fox’s twitter feed certainly perpetuates the ship. Believe me, as an American, Lozza’s Donald is the ONLY Donald I want to see or hear from for the remainder of the US election cycle. If only that could be the case!
I was happy for Sergeant Hathaway to move away from policing at the end of the “final” episode Intelligent Design as it seemed to make him so miserable. Hathaway thanks Lewis just as Morse asked Strange to do on his death bed so many years earlier. It was a tear-jerking-in-a-good-way ending to a show… and then the show came back for two more series. I still don’t know what to make of Inspector Hathaway, but the “final, and we really mean it this time, final” episode ends with James looking to the future.
Fans of Inspector Lewis were recently treated to photos of the first script for series 9- One for Sorrow. For many, the real sorrow will be that Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent is no longer among our favorite Oxfordshire detectives.
As happy as I was for the Lewis reunion that was series 8, on the whole, the series was lackluster- with one exception. Rebecca Front’s deadpan delivery of Innocent’s every scene was the glue that held that series together. Her departure does not bode well for series 9. If we must lose Innocent, it’d be nice if Lewis could find new purpose as an acting interim Chief Super- especially after an entire series in which Robbie struggled to remain relevant. (So what if he’d probably have to take an exam for that. Let Robbie call the shots for a while and see how Hathaway likes that…) Alas, ‘Lewis’ isn’t an adjective, and the new CS Moody has already been cast.In the Morseverse, the Chief Superintendents are always a mirror unto the detective in their charge. Jean herself was nowhere near as innocent as the frolicking bloody baa lambs that she likes to see on the front page of her newspaper. Rather, she was the reflection of Lewis’ own innocence- the happy go lucky sergeant was suddenly a widower. Just as Morse was a bit strange and young Endeavour is bright, Lewis remained innocent, devastated by loss yet untainted by the years of investigating violent crime. We don’t need a new Chief Super to tell us that Hathaway is moody when Innocent herself can just call him out for being a bloody diva.
Although Innocent made Lewis the most endearing of the Morseverse detectives, she was often at odds with Lewis’ methods or Hathaway’s smug face. When a critical Innocent asked Lewis if he’d shaved, out of nowhere popped up Dr Hobson who quipped, “she hasn’t.” And several seasons later, when Hobson apprised Lewis of the mistaken identity of their corpse, Lewis said something to the effect of “when Innocent finds out about this, it’ll be newspaper-down-the-back-of-trousers time.” (Thank heavens no one has written a fanfic in which Hobson watches as Innocent spanks Lewis and Hathaway…)
But at the end of the day, Innocent was always pulling for Lewis. My favorite scene with Innocent has to be one in which I suspect Rebecca Front broke character to ham it up a little. In Generation of Vipers, Innocent tosses Lewis the keys to Hobson’s house. It’s off camera, but if you turn up the volume, you can hear Jean Innocent making a snogging sound. Not to mention the hilarious mug that she pulled when Lewis and Hobson actually did snog! Rebecca Front always brought just the right touch of humor to her scenes.
If Innocent was happy for Lewis and Hobson, Robbie did never did know what to do with Jean’s cryptic references to Mr. Innocent. As we know very little of her personal life, we can only hope that the powers that be grace us with a decent exit story for Innocent. Whether she’s been raptured to Scotland Yard or has decided to open a tea shop, I hope wherever she is, that she is happy to go home at night at last.
I is for Innocent! Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 9
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 9
I’m cheating a bit today as I had already prepared a Toast to Innocent for the Jean Innocent Appreciation Week last year. I will just add that Innocent is my favorite of the adjectival bosses because she doesn’t need to join the Masons like Strange or shoot a tiger like Bright to prove that she is a bad-ass detective. Rebecca Front is a woman of infinite talent and I wish that she could have stayed on board for the final series of Lewis.
For the full Toast to Innocent, click here. I’ll reblog it too.
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, Day 8
Laura Hobson is the second pathologist character created by Colin Dexter for his Morse novels; the character was reprised in the televised series starting in 1995 and is played by the exquisite Clare Holman. Her witty repartee and passion for the job place her scenes among the best in any episode of Morse or Lewis. The perpetually lovelorn Morse met many a nubile female that I like to call collectively “Morsenip” (catnip for Morse). Hobson first appears in the novel the Way Through the Woods, taking over for Max DeBryn when he dies of a heart attack during an investigation. She is the classic Morsenip- a professional, intelligent music lover who sasses him and seems unattainable. But in the novel, Morse does finally score with someone, possibly Dr Hobson. Colin Dexter only uses the pronoun ‘she,’ leaving us guessing if it was Hobson or another woman of interest. In the TV version of the WTTW, Hobson remains unattainable as she is going out with the annoying DCI Johnson. True to Morsenip form though, Hobson eventually comes around, but by the time she starts flirting with Morse several years later, Morse is in a comfortable relationship with Adele Cecil.
Hobson finally meets her match in Lewis, of course. Sure, the cop/pathologist romance seems like a trope, but Hobson and Lewis are unique because they were never supposed to be together. There is a realism between these two characters that you don’t see in other scripted relationships. They were two totally different people who wanted different things from life, yet they somehow found themselves along the same path as they got older. Their attraction took years to amount to anything as Lewis felt like it was a betrayal to his dead wife. Hobson for her part didn’t wait around for Lewis; she dated throughout the series, much to Lewis’ dismay. But it was an interesting journey, and we gradually got to learn more about her- clarinet, Sagittarius, favourite colour blue- not to mention her flatmates from her college days whose betrayal got her nearly buried alive. She is resilient and made it clear that she does not need a man in her life, but when Lewis finally opened his heart to her, she did not hesitate to let the world know.
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis: Day 7
Robbie’s birthday is established in the Dead of Jericho as being a few days after June 11, so his sign is the astrological twins Castor and Pollux. But does Robbie Lewis really demonstrate the dualism of a Gemini? Probably not; he is a pretty straight-forward man. Robbie most resembles a typical Gemini in the days of Morse. The sergeant was very outgoing and known to banter. He is also highly curious and clever, often having lead Morse to the right conclusion in a way that the overly cerebral Morse had missed. “You’ve done it again, Lewis!”
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 6 or the many Foils of Robbie Lewis, part 2.
Robbie Lewis is an understated kind of guy, so the writers have often resorted to the literary foil so that the audience gets to know who he is- and who he’s not. This was done with varying degrees of success over the course of the series. It’s not terribly helpful to say that Graham Lawrie is evil, therefore Robbie is good but it was fun to watch Robbie get wound up anyway. I would much rather watch my favorite foil in action: Alec Pickman, the poetry spouting artist who was so inebriated he almost wobbled off his houseboat. (I wonder if there were any outtakes in which Rupert Graves actually fell off the boat?) Alec Pickman sizes Robbie up saying, “there’s a rather disagreeable whiff of the Presbytery about you, Lewis.” Hathaway would disagree, of course. But Pickman is not totally wrong in his assessment of Lewis. “You look like the dependable sort. … the type that thinks girls need to ask to be kissed.” Yup, Robbie Lewis is a consensual kind of guy. The perceptive Pickman notices a glance between Robbie and Laura senses the tension. “Are you two? No, no of course not. She likes ‘em a bit wilder does our Laura.” Good thing that, as Laura says, “some of us move on.”
We’ve already visited Nick Cornish, and stay tuned for more foils as we make our way through the alphabet…
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 5!
Endeavour is what BritishDetectives recently called Continuity Porn, and I am hard pressed to come up with a better description than that. It’s Continuity Porn for Morse, of course, but also for Lewis. From one-line references to Danny Griffin the racecar driver, Lady Mathilda’s, and Holmwood Park to the epic episode Prey where we meet Hathaway’s dad and the bad to the bone Mortmaigne family, Endeavour reminds us that Lewis’ heart still beats (or, it will anyway, in the future). We know from watching Lewis that Crevecoeur Hall is home to a true predator -not the innocent tiger killed in Prey, but Augustus Mortmaigne, pedophile. The way that young Morse ingratiates himself with the Thursdays is a distant echo of how the older Morse would be a fixture in the Lewis family. Only time will tell if there will be a connection between Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright and the case of Allison Bright in the Lewis episode Expiation. Fingers crossed!
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis Day 4!
Colin Dexter wrote 13 Inspector Morse novels, a handful of short stories and has consulted on the televised versions of the Morseverse. Colin Dexter’s cameos are my favorite Easter eggs. I would love to see a Tumblr that chronicles all his cameos, but I just don’t have the time or resources to pull that off. (Anyone?) Dexter’s original Sergeant Lewis was older than Morse and a Welsh former boxer, but Colin Dexter has said that he prefers Kevin Whately’s portrayal. We do too because we have been able to watch the Sergeant blossom into an Inspector in his own right.
My fondest wish for the end of the series would be an extended Colin Dexter cameo as Laura Hobson’s dad giving Robbie Lewis his blessing at Robbie and Laura’s wedding. He’d say something to the effect of life doesn’t always turn out how you’d originally intended, but the end result is wonderful none the less. [and spoilers, this does not happen, but I can always dream, right? ]
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis: Day 3, orThe many foils of Robbie Lewis, part 1.
Who is Louise Cornish gonna call when her husband is acting strange and it don’t look good? Ghostbus… oh wait, no, Robbie Lewis. Reliable Robbie has tea and listens to a wife’s concerns about her wayward husband- a former colleague of Robbie’s. He leaves a rambling voice message for Nick Cornish, then drops some change in front of a busker on the bridge. That’s our sentimental Robbie, not wanting to admit that sometimes people change for the worse. He didn’t give up on Nick Cornish just as he never gave up on Morse- until it became clear that Cornish was running a meth lab in Croatia. Nick Cornish’s line about Robbie Lewis and the Ladybird Book of policing reminds us that some people might mistake Robbie’s stability and decency for naïveté. But Robbie is an anchor for everyone in his life, and he has his eyes wide open. Robbie had thought that he and Nick were cut from the same cloth, but by the end of Ramblin’ Boy, he sees a bit of himself in Louise instead. Her lament that she will never love again resonates with him. But Robbie realizes that he too has changed, and he goes off to find Dr. Hobson. Cue the swans!
Alphabetical reasons to love Lewis, day 2!
Barrington Pheloung is the composer of the Morse and Lewis themes and incidental music. While the Morse theme sounds like a foggy mystery cut by a beep beep beep beacon (yup, Morse code), Lewis’ theme is inherently uplifting. There is only one moment in the whole series where I didn’t feel better after hearing the Lewis resolution music: at the end of the Indelible Stain, Robbie says that he is too stuck in the past to call Laura, and James is going to go home- ostensibly to read, but really to drink himself into oblivion. Cue the resolution music?
We were lucky enough to get a Lewis CD (available on Amazon!) after series 1 and 2, but I wish that there had been more. The spooky variants on the Lewis music in the episode Falling Darkness are especially chilling. It is fun to see Lewis variants pop up in Endeavour now and then too. The following paragraph I am borrowing from this blog’s entry 22/07/13.
On the Lewis CD liner notes, Barrington Pheloung writes, “For Lewis’ own theme I chose the clarinet- which was always his counterpoint instrument in Morse- because I loved its “woody” character. Set within a clearly Mozartian “simplicity/complexity” of orchestration, I have tried to depict Lewis’ deeper maturity and determination and perhaps, his deeper dignity.” So, umm, speaking of clarinets and dignity, I’m sure it is not a coincidence that in the episode “Dark Matter,” Hobson is playing Lewis’s instrument. ;)
The final series of Lewis will be airing in the US on PBS starting on August 7! Here is my humble attempt to generate some enthusiasm for my favorite franchise of the Morseverse: 26 days, 26 brief but alphabetical reasons that this show deserves the praise of the interwebs! Without further ado…
A is for A. E. Housman (1859-1936)!
Housman was a favourite poet of Colin Dexter’s when it came to finding quotes for his novels, and the references continued into the televised Morse and Lewis. The literary references are one of the things that make this show great, and Housman seems to annoy Robbie a lot less than bloody Shakespeare. Who can forget Hathaway reciting part of A Shropshire Lad to Scarlet Mortmaigne? (Of course she bedded him after that. Who wouldn’t?) Sure enough, when I didn’t understand a reference to something in Lewis, it usually came from Housman. Down Among the Fearful, anyone? There’s a title that had nothing to do with the episode, but you can’t go wrong with Housman.
