Service of All the Dead

I love any mystery that keeps me guessing and this was one of them. I found the church a great atmospheric creepy place for murder. Morse's attempt at relationships show a man who's plainly out of practice and you have to feel sorry for him. I never trusted the woman of his affections in this episode....but...well you'll see. The camaraderie between Morse and Lewis just gets better and better with each episode. There is a homage to Hitchcock's Vertigo..All in all a very intriguing storyline. Just one thing, Morse always seems to get the crap knocked out of him in every episode..time for another pint.

When a church warden is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Morse has a race against time to catch a serial killer....There are a total of six murders to solve, although Morse's prime suspect is one of the victims who meets a rather sticky end....The only connection between the victims was that they all attended the same church service....Could a seemingly innocent woman Morse takes a liking to be involved? Service of all the Dead is a rather ridiculous story that doesn't seem to have the thrill of most of the Morse franchise, even if the conclusion to the case is rather good.

As usual, John Thaw and Kevin Whately put in cherished performances, but it isn't enough to take away from the fact that Service of all the Dead is a slightly weak and over the top edition of this legendary police drama.

This was a rather subdued final episode for the first series. 6/10

I personally prefer the middle years of Morse, in the second series they really did seem to get into their stride, after a great first episode I found the two that followed somewhat unremarkable.

Service of all the dead has some very memorable moments, a good start, a cracking ending, but there are two things I'm not a fan of. Firstly, Morse moons after Ruth like a lovesick puppy, almost to the point of being obsessive, and secondly the story is very confusing, the motives for the murders seem wafer thin.

It's Morse, so it's still a very fine watch, Thaw and Whateley are as wonderful as ever, plus it works as a mystery, you are left guessing. It has a very dark, gothic feel to it, the music is perfect.

I really didn't care for the character of Ruth Rawlinson, although John Normington is very good here, if very creepy.

Pretty good, but much better episodes would follow, 6/10.

There are a number of negative reviews of this episode and though in principle I agree that the storyline is absurd and utterly unbelievable this is how UK crime dramas generally work.

If you want watertight plots and police procedures then I highly recommend the French cop drama 'Spiral', if you prefer flights of fancy then this episode will be right up your street.

There was something rather endless about this episode. Part of the problem was that we had characters misidentified. When a man is found stabbed in a church, Morse is brought in. This quickly leads to him becoming enamored with a woman who is employed by the church. She is in control of cleaning and sprucing up the church. It is obvious that she also participates in other ways. As time goes by, we begin to have a series of murders or suicides, all of which are connected. What is interesting is that the service that began all this was never announced to the congregation but there were thirteen participants. A negative factor, to me, was Morse's hurried relationship with the woman. Still, even though this was not the best episode, it still is superior to most of its kind.