- Professor Lipton was Nina’s tutor. Have a word with him, also the university counselling service. See if there’s anything we ought to know about there. Young, black, working class girl trying to make her way in the most rarefied, elitist environment in the country. Did she feel alienated, marginalised, ostracised enough to fall in with bad company?
- Well, you don’t need a master’s degree in criminology to tell you that if somebody whacks you over the head and nicks your wallet that he’s dangerous.
- Little more to it than that, sir.
- Crackpot theories about why people do bad things were all the rage when I was a cadet.
- As, no doubt, were the twin innovations of suspects having motives and fingerprints.
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 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.
“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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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!
My local PBS just rebroadcast the 1997 Rebecca, and I noticed that a secondary WGBH station is playing it tonight (9/21/17) at 9 with 2AM repeats on the main WGBH; so check your local listings!
Anyway, I didn’t realize before all the little nods to Rebecca in the Inspector Lewis episode Life Born of Fire. The reappearance of Rebecca is probably because it stars Game of Thrones actors (Charles Dance, Diana Rigg) but of course, there is also Emilia Fox looking just like Girl Hathaway. (I am still mad that Laurence’s cousin Emilia Fox didn’t play Nell Hathaway in series 9. It would have been too perfect!) And Emilia Fox’s mom Joanna David also played the 2nd Mrs. de Winter in a previous version; Joanna David played Morse’s ex-fiancée Susan. So there’s already a lot of fun Morse-verse connections before even considering Life Born of Fire.
Life Born of Fire co-stars Rachael Sterling as Zoe Kenneth, who burns down the house just like Mrs. Danvers, who was played by Sterling’s mom, Diana Rigg. And just for fun, here is Robbie Lewis’ Charles Dance impression, rescuing Hathaway from the fire. =)
‘Tis better to give than to receive, and Robbie Lewis is an expert. Looking for a get-well-soon gift? Why not a baggie of kiwifruit? Need a gift to thank your hard-working and lonely sergeant whose husband has left for an extended work mission in Canada? Look no farther than your local taxidermist- it’s Tony the Tabby! And what to offer a new mum? A dodo onesie so the little one can learn about extinct species. And bonus- this gift doubles as an “I’m sorry I was such a tosser” peace-offering to your girlfriend. No need to thank him, Lizzie and Laura. Robbie Lewis is just that awesome.
The end of the alphabet and the end of Lewis’ adventures… as promised, I have returned to finish Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis now that the conclusion has aired in the US.
As Laura and James note to one another in series 8. once a copper, always a copper. Robbie tells James that while it’s Laura idea to go to New Zealand where her niece is having a baby, it is his idea to see the world while they are still young enough to enjoy it. Robbie, however, has second thoughts; Moody may not renew his consultant contract if he leaves. He articulates a bizarre death wish to Laura- he wants to work ‘til he dies- and this is really saying something because he had just been caught in an explosion. He is too scared to live free, so he’d rather die bound to his job. Laura gets credit for making the most teary-eyed reference to Morse in the entire series. And so they let each other go be the strong-willed people they are: Robbie a single-minded copper and Laura an independent woman ready to travel. She doesn’t even need Robbie to take her to the airport.
Eventually, James intervenes and makes Robbie see sense. Though he grovels for having treated Laura rather shabbily, Robbie never actually tells her “I love you.” More specifically, he needed to say “I love you more than the job.” Sorry, Robbie, but Laura deserves better. Meanwhile, it seems that Robbie will be lucky enough to have his cake and eat it too. He is forgiven by Laura *and* Moody leaves the door open for him to return after their trip.
Though I wish we could have done without the entire Robson row, the final scenes are beautifully shot. Hathaway reprises his role as airport taxi for Lewis and Hobson. Lewis is wearing the shirt that Hobson once found to be so garish. Their silhouettes move through the airport; Laura goes first representing both Robbie’s past and his future; next comes Robbie with all their baggage; and lastly James keeping vigil. Together James and Laura give Robbie a nudge towards the security queue, a gesture that is both a benediction from James and a reassurance from Laura. At long last, Robbie is moving on.
We must get to the bottom of this: Kevin Whately in a slip over his suit. WHAT IS HAPPENING!?! Thanks to @muffinzelda for alerting me to the really weird series “Who Shot Simon Cowell?” It also includes Girl Hathaway aka Emilia Fox, cousin of our beloved Lawrence Fox aka James Hathaway. Also - WHAT!?! - Kev plays a crooked cop? We really must see this bizarreness ITV
As@tinysassysparklycucumber said, I happened upon a teaser for the “Who Shot Simon Cowell?” sketches on Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night takeaway. Kevin Whately and Emilia Fox investigate Cowell’s murder, spoofing their roles on Lewis and Silent Witness. It’s available on YouTube, but only the first and last episode are unblocked for the US. Somewhere in between, Robbie Lewis is wearing lingerie over his suit. I CANNOT UNSEE THIS. I NEED CONTEXT! This screen cap comes from a preview, but we can’t actually see the full sketches in the US. This is driving me to madness! Can someone help us Yankees out?
Alphabetical Reasons to Love Lewis, day 23, OR things Robbie smells like, part two.
*Contains mild spoilers for series 9, but mostly spoilers for things that DON’T happen, because this post is pretty hypothetical about what might have been*
Hobson: “I think I preferred it when you were building canoes.”
Lewis: “No you didn’t; I was a bad-tempered old grouch who smelled of wood glue.”
Hobson: “Yes, but you were MY bad-tempered old grouch who smelled of wood glue.”
I rejoice that Lewis came back for two more series after the “final” episode, but I have to admit that series 8 and 9 didn’t give Robbie a lot of character development. It is damned awkward to watch our beloved Robbie try to find his place again when everyone thinks that he should be sidelined. (I mean, each time Foyle came back he had new responsibilities or a new era to tackle, and the writers found plausible ways of keeping his and Sam’s paths intertwined, am I right?) I wanted to see Robbie building that canoe like a boss and enjoying retirement so much that Jean Innocent needed to drag him off a lake in a police boat. I wanted to see Robbie be lauded and heroic. When Hobson said, “I think you should talk to Robbie,” in regards to the hammer killer, I wanted the response to be “yes please Inspector Lewis, we need you to reprise our Graham Lawrie investigation!” But no, instead it seems that he missed an alibi and the lab bungled the DNA and everyone is like, “go away Robbie.” Ugh.
By the time series 9 rolls around, Innocent is not even there to champion Lewis. Chief Superintendent Moody didn’t add anything to the show, in my opinion. What if Lewis could have taken over for Innocent on an interim basis? Hathaway would have hated having Lewis as a boss again, and as Hathaway was pre-occupied with his dad, Lewis would have to step in- right on top of Hathaway’s toes. Or, what if Moody had been crooked? Hathaway would be eager to please his new boss and have blind faith in him, but Lewis suspects something is amiss. So when Moody tries to sideline Lewis ostensibly for his age, it is really because Lewis is the only one capable of finding out the truth. Lewis would get into a do-or-die situation with Moody, and Hathaway could save the day. Laura would still smack Robbie around for putting himself in harm’s way. But that’s not how it unfolds in series 9; instead it’s more of Robbie fighting to be relevant.
At the very least, I was glad to see scenes of Lewis happy at last with Hobson in series 8 (sniff, sniff, these are lacking in series 9). I imagine that, even if he paid someone to finish the canoe for him, Robbie will have other woodworking projects and Laura will be enjoying the fumes for years to come.
Val Lewis is Robbie’s wife and the mother of his kids; she is the anchor of Robbie’s life throughout the tumultuous days of Morse. She pops up sporadically in the background of the show several times over the course of the years and is featured in many of Lewis’ stories. (Why would she want to go see ‘Cats’ when she is allergic, Robbie wonders aloud.) An adoring husband, Robbie says that he likes her a bit plump when Val is on a slimming kick. Indeed, a few of Val’s outside interests intersect nicely with the murder du jour- not just the dieting cult, but the Greek lessons and the TV shows that she makes Robbie watch are a few examples.
Val’s only spoken line is when she orders dinner in a Greek restaurant, and Lewis recruits Val’s Greek teacher to help in a murder investigation (Greeks Bearing Gifts). Val must have made a lot of progress with her language skills as in Cherubim and Seraphim, Robbie asks his son where mum is and the young Lewis responds that “mum’s down at the wine store translating. It’s Cyprus sherry week!” There must be more of a story behind that…
Val, killed in a hit and run as part of a failed robbery by Simon Monkford, is omnipresent in Lewis; her perfume on a victim; the mattress that hurts Robbie’s back but it’s all that’s left of his marriage; Robbie’s dislike of psychologists; and that picture of her in the red shirt that seems to migrate to every room of Robbie house and his office are all reminders of what once was. “I loved me wife,” Robbie emphatically tells his former sergeant Ally MacLennon when she suggests that adultery was commonplace among married coppers. Though Robbie gets some closure when Simon Monkford is brought to justice, Robbie admits to Michelle Marber years later that he still needs to talk to his wife every day. And yet, in one of the last episodes (Ramblin’ Boy), Robbie doesn’t feel that familiar pain as he watches a family grieving at the crematorium. At long last, Val is slipping away.
***
PS, on the subject of Robbie’s man-pain, I recommend Joe Maddison’s War, starring Kevin Whately. The story and setting are a bit different than Lewis, but there are many plot/family similarities too- it’s also written by Alan Plater who penned several Lewis episodes. It has a personal approach, so if you need to see Robbie exploring his emotions, this is your best bet!
Alphabetical Reasons to love Lewis, day 20, or the Many Foils of Robbie Lewis, part 4.
Nicky Turnbull is Robbie’s fellow Northerner but the two could not be more different. Nicky is a reformed criminal hacker who stole secrets and leaked secrets from MI5 and the Pentagon. Following a stint in prison, he becomes a best-selling author when he writes his memoir- “confessions of a rock and roll hacker.” Robbie is mortified when Innocent asks him to babysit/provide police protection to Turnbull who has been receiving death threats. Robbie pretends to be an old family friend from Tyneside but really bristles at Nicky’s attempts to reminisce about home. Robbie hates how Nicky exploits the story of a boy from the wrong side of the tracks in Tyneside making it big. “Humble beginnings… they love all that crap.” Turnbull says. Lewis complains to Innocent that “He’s everything I hate: celebrity criminal and professional Geordie.” “That’s only two things,” she reminds him. “Well it’s enough to keep me going!” Lewis says.
Furthermore, Lewis heartily disapproves of Nicky’s plans for a three way sex romp with the young women who have invited him to speak at the Oxford Union. It’s hard to feel bad when Nicky Turnbull is murdered on Robbie’s watch. Enter Mrs. Turnbull who arrives and recognizes our Robbie and tugs on his heart strings. It turns out that Diane Turnbull was Robbie’s first girlfriend. Robbie, being a good boy scout, invites the grieving widow Diane to stay in his spare room.
Robbie’s interactions with the Turnbulls reveal just how kind and decent Robbie is. Nicky’s infidelities to Diane contrast with Robbie and Val’s solid marriage. Nicky is reprehensible, and Diane is not entirely honest either. She will bend the truth for publicity’s sake if enables her to make a profit. There is one time that she calls it like she sees it though: she is the first one to point out to Robbie that Dr. Hobson fancies him.
Alphabetical Resasons to Love Lewis, day 19, OR, Things Robbie smells like, part 1
Hansie Kriel: Every time I go into that flat upstairs, I smell an after shave that isn’t mine. Now I know whose it is.
Lewis: Not guilty, Mr. Kriel. I’m strictly a soap and water man.
Lewis has some explaining to do after being caught having dinner with a leggy blonde suspect Ann Kriel in Music to Die For. (And Robbie smelling like soap and water has turned up in every fanfic ever since…) Remember the honey traps that Morse constantly fell into (Morsenip: catnip for Morse)? In the early days of Lewis, every episode featured some female of interest to Robbie à la Morsenip, but the concept of widowed Robbie dating suspects right and left really didn’t fit with who he was. Nobody really believed that Robbie would buy Stephanie Fielding a bottle of wine that alternatively could have cost the same as a small car. It’s not like Lewis to get distracted by a pretty face during a case. That was clearly Morse. Truer to Robbie-form was his interaction with Dr. Kate Jeckyll in the pilot. “I’m single!” She exclaims, and Robbie obliviously continues his grocery shopping (grabbing a plain shirt as Dr Hobson had criticized his fancy one at the crime scene).
The women that Robbie had a connection with were often murderesses or caused other trouble, such that Hathaway remarked “sometimes, Inspector Lewis, I worry about your taste in women.” Fortunately, Music to Die For (which is in series 2 but really feels like a series 1 script) marked the end of the Lewis-brand-Morsenip era, though there are a few notable femmes fatales in later seasons. Robbie’s old sergeant Ally MacLennon gives him a good snog and he hardly objects. When Hobson finds out (over MacLennon’s dead body, of course) this leads to a staring contest between Lewis and Hobson so intense that only Hathaway can break them apart.
Robbie is all the more endearing to us because of his faithfulness to Val’s memory- he never lets these honeys get the best of him. All things in due time, though. In the first series (Expiation) Robbie tells Laura that he sometimes worries that they are not on the same page, but seven years later he tells her that he is ready to turn the page to a new chapter.
