Deadly Slumber

This is an excellent episode of Morse, with a terrific story, awesome characters, and some particularly good performances, notably Brian Cox.

It is saddest episode of Morse, very tragic, with a heartbreaking thread running through, Mr Stebbings and his poor daughter. Brian Cox is outstanding, and delivers a truly sincere, moving performance. His scenes with Thaw are terrific, so moving.

A great, dramatic opening, a truly baffling mystery, murder or suicide?

Janet Suzman, Jason Durr, Penny Downie, all terrific, this is a superbly produced drama, the visuals are sublime, it looks gorgeous, with some glorious location work.

A truly great episode, but then, was there ever a bad one? Just variations of brilliance. 9/10

The usual high level of performance from the entire cast, and it feels like there were more really good plot twists and misdirections than in most episodes. I think the course of events to the final unknotting (I think it expresses what I mean more precisely than "denouement") makes this perhaps the darkest episode of the whole thirteen-year run.

If you are a fan, this one is a treat, easily one of the best. The story has layers and evn the layers have layers, interesting throughout. A true mystery.

This certainly ranks near the top of the Morse mysteries. It involves the death of very rich man. It appears to be a carbon monoxide death but further evidence from the examiner shows that he was tied up and murdered. What this leads to is a case of a young woman who died during a routine surgery, performed by the dead man and his wife. There is a college aged son who is in the home, a student, and a host of other possible suspects. The most viable is the father of the dead girl who lost a court case where he charged negligence. What's great about this is the peaks and valleys that appear as Morse and Lewis ply their trade. We also have some examples of people who could be seen as purely evil being much more complex and sympathetic. Excellent start to the seventh season.

A Morse mystery that was heading to be brilliant. Morse and Lewis only have one suspect and once they have an alibi, there's no leads to follow and they have to start over. This dearth of information and suspects makes for interesting, realistic-feeling, viewing.

However, towards the end the writers do their best to wreck the episode as they throw in twist after twist with each one more implausible than the last. They should have just stopped the episode at a point but just throwing more layers of complexity in, for complexity's sake.

It's still very good in the end but the writers do manage to turn a brilliant episode into something less so.