Masonic Mysteries

Easily the second worst of Morse - coming in at a slow 32nd place to the horrendous 1993 episode Twilight Of The Gods. Why oh why why would anyone place an an iconic actor like Ian McDiarmid who can never be disassociated with Dennis Potter planted down in this episode when it's nothing like a Dennis Potter story? This whole episode is a disgusting travesty. As usual Morse is infested with the lust bug - this time for disdainful and disinterested Madeleine Newton of Auf Wiedersehen Pet and Grange Hill total lack of fame. Happily she is murdered a few minutes in - this is the only moment of pleasure in this Morse debacle. Totally wasted (in both senses) is Iain Cuthbertson. Diane Fletcher sums this whole episode by wiping a theoretical piece of dog faeces off her shoe as she exits a conversation with Morse. The producers of this episode should hang their heads in shame 1/10 Mark James Burden

The atmosphere is quite menacing, a cross between Lynch movies and The X-Files. Morse has clearly been set up, and the way things defy rational explanation im going from bad to worse becomes quite creepy and unsettling in a skilfully visceral way. Ultimately, however, the episode creators bite off more than they can chew: Characters from a distant past; old mentors; old scores getting settled; a villain who represents Morse's nemesis; IT hackers; the impossibility of love... It's too much and it turns the story into a cake. I know quite a bit about Mozart and the Magic Flute and all that. But if you asked me WHY this particular investigation has masonic symbolism swirling all around, in truth I would struggle to give a coherent reply.

In fictional time Morse had been an Inspector for around 30 years by season 4 of "Inspector Morse."

Morse gets into an argument with his date to the opera rehearsal at the very first scene of this episode. She tells him in front of several other members of the opera group that she wants nothing to do with him, that he drives too fast, that she was scared to get into a car with him, and that she wants her friend (another opera group member) to drive her home after the rehearsal.

So a few minutes later when everyone hears a chilling scream in the concert hall building, Morse runs directly to the scream, and finds his ex-date has been murdered. Just like any dumb patsy in any old Perry Mason TV series episode, Morse immediately holds the dead woman to him as if she had been the love of his life (not just a casual acquaintance).

Then Morse sees the huge carving knife laying next to the dead woman and picks it up (destroying any possible fingerprints of the real killer). When the rest of the opera group arrive, Morse is holding the knife over the dead woman, and he is covered in her blood. What a moron.

Morse should have been sacked from the Police force on the spot just for being so stupid. Any copper that can pull the dumbest and most cliche self-incrimination move of a TV show from the 1950s needs to be canned. I am surprised he did not also claim amnesia and PTSD to top it off.

When Morse gets suspended because he is a suspect in the murder, he pulls his tired "I am the victim" routine. It is consistent with his alcoholism that he resents the people assigned to clean up after his incompetence for incriminating himself.

Sergeant Lewis should have taken him out back of the police station and administered a sobering beating, so that Morse could take time while at Hospital to reflect on his many dumb mistakes during his suspension. Considering the way Morse treats Lewis, it would have been nice to see Lewis pound his flabby face in.

This episode was perhaps the worst of the series. In later years, Morse occasionally played the victim of police politics, and did not take accountability for his own bad choices and mistakes. Like the many times when Morse would try dating a witness or suspect, and it usually blew up in his face. Morse routinely took advantage of his position to ask witnesses and suspects out for a drink, so he could hit on them, as the "dirty old man" without any scruples.

I agree that there are a couple things played for laughs here, but the Sherlockian efforts of the bad guys makes this very entertaining. Morse finds himself singled out for a frame-up. When an attractive woman, whom he is interested in, goes to answer a phone call, she is brutally murdered. He holds her in his arms and has picked up a knife, so he immediately comes under suspicion. Of course, it seems that Morse's superiors are always looking for a way to emasculate him. A tiresome, overzealous detective is put on the case. He is a reactionary and doesn't like Morse (or he is the son of Barney Fife) and goes about boobing up the investigation. What is really fun is the variety of ways that Morse is being set up. There's just so much to point to his involvement, and that's the rub. Anyone with a shred of skepticism would find the mass of stuff way too much. The Masons are brought in as a mystical element which adds to the entertainment.

"Don't get carried away."

This episode's writer, Julian Mitchell, wrote the screenplay for one of the best Inspector Morse (IM) films I've seen so far, Ghost in the Machine. Though played serious, that episode is something of a comic masterpiece because of its main guest character, an aristocrat who's sophisticated, composed, yet oblivious at the same time.

One wonders if Mitchell was going for comedy with Masonic Mysteries (MM), too, albeit camp comedy. That might halfway explain such a ridiculous episode. IM is no stranger to melodrama, but MM goes further than any opera ever did. When an established, relatively straight series suddenly does an episode in which its detective hero is charged with murder, well, this is the kind of thing I'd expect from a series' last season, when the filmmakers have all run out of ideas. Bizarre to see this in Season 4 of IM, preceding more than fifteen episodes, at least some of which are excellent.

Clichés are at every turn. The story is one of those melodramas in which a diabolical, omnipotent villain orchestrates just about every nightmare scenario possible to drive the hero crazy. And wouldn't ya know, no one will believe Hero's claims of innocence! Thus do Bottomley -- twittiest detective ever and way dumber than Lestrade and Japp -- and Morse's own boss of many years turn against him. Mayhem ensues, dear friends die, and no corner of Morse's home and private life are safe from invasion by the ever-lurking mastermind. The film even flirts with dragging Lewis into the same web of suspicion and suffering as Morse, but noticeably it drops this quite suddenly, as if finally sensing how silly things are.

We even get the old "If I'm not back in five minutes..." line. However, the self-dramatization may be worst when Morse actually does an interior monologue voice-over, an amazing first for IM!

Morse looks stupid overall. MM always makes a fool out of him, and in fact doesn't let him participate in events to take control and redeem himself.

This features some of the worst, most affected guest acting ever. There are many culprits, led by Bottomley; he really belongs in something like Fawlty Towers rather than IM.

The actors probably got no help from director Danny Boyle, who keeps doing his own bad work. He ruins plot twists by telegraphing them to death. He frequently chooses inexplicable camera distance. He likes shooting disjointed conversation scenes, with the characters sometimes never sharing a camera shot, or not appearing at all, as if they're not even on the same set. (Maybe editor Bob Dearberg just bore a grudge.) My favorite bit of bad staging is the part where someone uses a gun to order a sitting person around, but is clearly pointing the pistol well over the person's head.

The villain keeps a room decked out in photos of Morse, many of them blown-up and artistically cut -- the villain's own Morse Museum, perhaps the wackiest set the IM crew ever made, complete with wackiest prop, the Morse-mobile dangling from the ceiling.

Unintentional giggles come from the plot's dated use of early 90s computers. Uncomfortable to think that so many officers could've been so wide-eyed and ignorant about technology, apparently unable to comprehend the department's own computer system and what "hackers" are.

More ill-advised comedy comes when a man faints to the floor upon learning he's been robbed of thousands, a shot done for laughs. (What, no spit-take?) Morse simply watches this with Lewis, straight-faced, then makes a banal comment. The filmmakers couldn't possibly be serious.

Morse speaks for MM when he says, "I've lost my sense of reality."