The Settling of the Sun

Compared to other Morse episodes, this falls very short. Nearly every scene is horribly clunky and deliberate. It made the whole episode very flat and plodding. Morse's interest in a female character (a recurring theme in Morse and often awkward) is very awful in this episode, it couldn't be less believable.

The worst Morse episode I have seen. Poorly scripted, poorly photographed, poorly lit and irritating performances. You will be lucky to last beyond the first 10 minutes of this dire story. Morse is lecherous, Jane is annoying, Sir Wilfred a creep and Lewis hardly appears!! Episodes before and since have been much better than this one. Even the appearances of Derek Fowlds cannot lift this beyond poor. Most of the characters are half-lit, the camera is usually focused on theor feet or up their nostrils and half the time there is silence, even in the middle of dialogue. Some characters (eg Supt Dewar) appear that any reason why.

I'm re-watching this series after a few years, and I must fondly remember later seasons because so far it's been a disappointment. The dialogue is often stupid or incomprehensible, and the direction is herky-jerky. Thank goodness for the Max and Lewis characters who keep things moving and entertaining.

I had seen the Inspector Morse series some years ago, and was re-viewing episodes when I started watching the prequel series, "Endeavour." I agree with the issues others had with the writing and somewhat clumsy editing and camera work, and I found some elements to be rather anachronistic. Had it been set in the mid- to late sixties, when "Endeavour" is set, where you had characters like Thursday who were war veterans with relatively recent memories of WWII, the anti Asian bias may have been more persuasive. Also, at one point a girl (on of a group of foreign students) makes an observation that all of the books in a room are written by men - again, something that seemed more 1960s rising-of-women's-lobe era than the late '80s, And a lot of the dialogue seemed very disjointed and artificial - people were making remarks at one another rather than conversing. On the plus side, the Morse series, like the Endeavour series, understands the importance of ensemble, something that I wish other British mystery series offered.

I agree this is not one of the best episodes. The plot line, performances and production are all below the usual standard. And the references to "Japs", drugs, and WW2 certainly do not age well but that's how it works. However I am an Inspector Morse fan. I watched it as a student when it first started in the late 1980s, have seen every episode several times and still like dipping in now and then on a wet Sunday afternoon.

What I DON'T understand is all the negative reviews starting "I have never liked Inspector Morse..." Why bother watching it in that case? Just so you can enjoy trashing it?