Second Time Around

Excellent episode. Starts intriguingly enough and through solid police work we pretty soon have a suspect that ticks all the boxes. Things are never that easy in Morseworld though.

From then we get layers of plot, with a 14-year-old unsolved mystery becoming the focus of investigations. It's great how the investigations into the two murders overlap and it makes for enthralling watching.

On that note, this is one of the Morse episodes that is closest to good old-fashioned police work. Often Morse's mysteries are solved in the Poirot way: deduce what happens, accuse the murderer of the crime, they confess. Makes for intriguing viewing but it's not very realistic.

This is thus more realistic (though the final twist does involve the Poirot Method).

When a master detective dies in his living room, Morse feels his death intensely. It seems they were trained at the same place and had great respect for one another. In the process of investigation, an old case, involving the death of an eight year old girl, brings a bulldog investigator back on the prowl. This man is incredibly smug and resentful of Morse. He hates the laws restricting what one can do to a witness to get at the truth. Soon a list of people who could be helpful, including the man who was convicted outside of court by the public, are arranged and questioned. Well done piece to say the least.

I saw this episode when it first aired in the U. S. nearly 30 years ago ('92, I think it was on PBS Mystery). It stuck with me. I saw it again recently and the memory of it held true. The acting here is as good as any you'll see in any TV production. The plot is convoluted but it's intended to be since, after all, it's about an unsolved murder in the long ago and one just committed. As Morse works his way through the maze every step, every twist, and the final denouement are all fair, all reasonable.

Inspector Morse is one of those policemen you wished existed in the real world. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't.

This story shows Morse and the whole series at its very best.

If you look through the mist of depravity, then It's a beautiful story in many ways. The acting is impeccable. The story is coherent and realistic.

John Thaw was better. That means Morse was never better.

Cativating from the start and never fails to bring a tear.

Inspector Morse could, at times, be somewhat Gothic and perhaps a bit too murderous. This one, however, was just about perfect. A twenty year old unsolved mystery reopens with the murder of a retiring senior detective, on the verge of publishing his memoirs. Did he know the killer's identity? Was he about to to reveal all? Morse investigates and follows the trail back to the early seventies, and then forward again to a successful conclusion. Along the way, he has to deal with the misjudgements of colleagues and a slew of red herrings, but the important thing is that for once in a detective mystery, the unfolded story is not just logical, but eminently human. There are no unnecessary killings just to up the body count. Everything that happens follows in a logical sequence from what went before and all that went before grows out of simple, human vulnerability. It's not just a detective story, it's a drama. Enjoy this one.