Service of All the Dead

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.

Totally confusing and senseless! Nothing made any sense and the romance between Morse and Ruth was ridiculous and unbelievable! I will watch one more episode but if it isn't any better, that's it! I cannot understand the popularity of this series! I also don't understand why this review has to be so long! I don't know how many ways I can say, .that so far, this series sucks. Morse fell for a woman in the first episode also! He sure seems to fall for all the wrong women and they don't seem to return his feelings! The writers seem to take pride in making each storyline as confusing as possible! Not sure I can force myself to watch another episode.

Plot issues aside (and this is one of the worst plots in the entire series - and, yeah, completely cringe -worthy "romance") - this is shot so terribly that it interferes with the very bad plot. The director only wanted to shoot through something else (windows, candles, bushes), or super up close shots done with a handheld camera to induce motion sickness and obscure what is going on, or off a mirror. I mean - it's like a film student gone wild with showy experimental shots that serve no purpose and directly impede storytelling. They should show this in film school as an example of what not to do.

I love Morse, and Lewis...and later - Endeavor. Watched all of these with my mum back then and have rewatched them all over the years. This one, however, is utterly dreadful!

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.

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.