Inspector Lewis, Season 4
Being as this series is centered on Oxford, England, especially around the ancient and venerable University there, many of the episodes concern goings on in academia and/or in the lives of the students and faculty, most of them bright-as-can-be and sometimes unscrupulous. No wonder Inspector Morse (the late John Shaw) stayed and died there and his protégé, Detective Inspector Robert Lewis (Kevin Whately) has returned to live and solve crimes there in his mentor’s stead. His assistant and very own protégé is Detective James Hathaway (Laurence Fox) and between them they do a bang-up job of solving murders.
While both are intelligent men, Hathaway, like Morse, is brainy and Oxford University-educated, a fact that has more class-difference meaning in the U.K. than it does in America (where our ingrained strain of anti-intellectualism reigneth). But the older Lewis can (and does) teach younger Hathaway much about the art and craft of sleuthing.
In Series Four (confusingly, it’s Season Five in the U.K. and on PBS), consisting of four 90-minute episodes, the duo take on many mysteries. Episode one, “Old Unhappy, Far Off Things,” Oxford’s last remaining all-female college is hosting a reunion of alumnae, whereupon one of the important guests is murdered, uncovering some older murders that are connected to the present, including the brutal rape of a visiting 15-year-old who only now, after a decade or so, has come out of her coma. British star, Juliet Stevenson, plays the head of college, whose companion (lover? not clear) is murdered. Other standout actors in this episode, well-written by Russell Lewis and directed by Nicholas Renton, are Kathryn O’Reilly, Joanne Pearce and Stephanie Street.
Episode two, “Wild Justice,” (written by Stephen Churchett and directed by Hettie Macdonald), features a marvelous cast, headlined by Ronald Pickup and Sian Phillips. (A parenthetical here, but the Brits seem to respect the accumulated wealth of acting talent from older actors more than we do, never going wrong when they use them properly.) When an American bishop, visiting at a multi-denominational meeting at conservative Catholic St. Gerard’s College, dies after drinking poisoned wine intended for retired policeman Barry Winter, who is murdered as well, the suspicions fall upon a variety of lay brothers, professors and the probable next head of College (of all things, a woman!) The title refers to an ancient murder by a child, a relative of the dead person having come back for their own “wild justice.” Great fun it is, with Lewis and Hathaway trying to figure out all the probable culprits and who ultimately did the deeds.
Episode Three, “The Mind Has Mountains” (writer: Patrick Harbison, director: Charles Palmer), in a less-than-scientifically-run clinical trial of a new anti-depressant drug, a student dies, then more are killed, leaving the duo to try and figure out as quickly as they can, who the villain is: a corrupt doctor or MI-5 (no Peter Firth to tell us, either). It’s complicated and a great deal of entertaining. Scottish actor Douglas Henshall (of
“Primeval” fame) plays the duplicitous doctor, the womanizing Alex Gansa, who doesn’t let us know if he is being set-up on these killings or is the culprit.
Episode Four, “The Gift of Promise,” (written by Dusty Hughes and directed by Metin Hüseyin) has the leader of a foundation that supports gifted children (Andrea De Ritter, played by Elize du Toit) murdered. By whom? Obviously that’s the episode length, but suspicion falls on a variety of otherwise smart people, including fifteen-year-old Zoe Suskin (a lovely Lucy Boynton), her publisher father, Leon (David Westhead) and a school-mate, Elmo Woodeson (Matt Orton), the latter two of whom end up dead. Who did it? Stay tuned….
The show doesn’t shy away form Town vs. Gown conflicts and the episodes show off Oxford Town and University well. It’s great to see quality writing that doesn’t denigrate learning.