Inspector Morse is a complex character in a series of detective novels by Colin Dexter. The novels were adapted into a TV series that ran for 33 episodes from 1987 to 2000. The series was closely involved with the author and influenced subsequent books. The main character, played by John Thaw, is remembered as Thaw’s most famous role.
Inspector Morse is a series of detective novels by English author Colin Dexter, a television series based on those novels, and the main character of the novels and television episodes. Let’s take them one at a time.
The character of Inspector Morse is a much more complex character than, say, Miss Jane Marple or Hercule Poirot, and also unlike them, has undergone development over the course of the novels. Inspector Morse is not a man to like immediately: he was a bachelor who drank heavily and had an uncanny knack for picking the wrong woman. He was testy and insensitive, even hurtful, yet, underneath the surface, vulnerable. He is also highly intellectual: his amusements include opera, word puzzles and impatience. Yet even if he doesn’t go straight as an arrow to the culprit every time, he has a knack for solving twisted and challenging cases.
The Inspector Morse character arose when Colin Dexter retired from his teaching career due to deafness and, several years later, began writing mysteries, while on a family holiday in 1972. That first venture proved to be the first book in the Inspector Morse series. , Last bus to Woodstock. This work was followed by 12 other novels and two books of 10 and 11 stories respectively, published from 1975 to 1999. The Inspector Morse novels are mainly set in Oxford and feature Inspector Morse, a detective Chief Inspector, and the his assistant, Detective Sergeant Lewis, a simpler and kinder man, who serves as a stunt double.
The ITV series based on the novels runs for 33 episodes and was created to overlap with the publication of the books, from 1987 to 2000. It finally concluded with an episode based on Dexter’s latest Morse book The Remorseful Day: The Inspector Morse Finale , from which – unlike Sherlock Holmes – there will be no return. By the end of its run, it was the longest-running series based on a detective in the 22 years that MYSTERY! it had been on the air. Some new work based on Sgt. Lewis, played to great acclaim by Kevin Whately, has since aired.
Colin Dexter has been closely involved with the series, making many appearances on the series. And the series influenced subsequent books: according to John Thaw, the actor who played Inspector Morse, Morse’s later descriptions of Dexter were descriptions of Thaw as Morse. Thaw was so closely identified with Morse that people wrote to him as the character and, despite his many other acting achievements, it is the role he has been most remembered for since he died in 2002.
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