(Left): Randolph Hotel. Morse Bar seen left of entrance looking onto street. ‘Morse Bar’ Drinks List next to Randolph sign. (Right): Theresa & ‘Superintendent Strange’ with Morse in background (click to enlarge).
A MEETING WITH JOHN THAW by Kenneth Seymour
LEWIS AND THE GHOST OF INSPECTOR MORSE
WHY LIFE'S STILL A CABARET FOR SHEILA HANCOCK -
By Elizabeth Day (September 23, 2006) -
Sheila Hancock moved millions with a heart-wrenching account of the death of her husband John Thaw.
Now, as she returns to the West End stage, she rejects her 'tedious' image as the nation's favourite grieving widow and proclaims life's still a cabaret:
From left to right: Piccadilly Circus; Walking towards the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Ave; Approaching the Lyric Theatre on Sharftesbury Ave . (Click on all photos to enlarge; all photos courtesy of Leila).
MORSE SERIES CELEBRATES 20 YEARS -
By Phil Vinter (January 6, 2007) -
The fictional detective series which put Oxfordshire on the map for millions of people around the world is celebrating its 20th anniversary.
NO RETURN FROM THE GRAVE FOR MORSE (by Steven Russell, January 27, 2007)
INSPECTOR MORSE AND THE STRANGE CASE OF THE VANISHING FORCE (FEBRUARY 10, 2007)
LEWIS…AND MORSE by Ian Wylie (February 12, 2007)
MEMORIES OF MORSE by Ian Wylie (February 12, 2007) Articles & Interviews (Pt.18)
THE MORSE BAR – THANK YOU AILISH
(By Theresa Healy)
I recently read the Radio Times article about ‘Lewis’ courtesy of the John Thaw website. ‘Lewis’ hasn’t come to Australia yet, but I’m sure it will in time. Still it’s great to be able to read about it in the meantime.
One thing I was sad to read was about the death of Ailish, the Irish lady who looked after the Morse crew at the Randolph Hotel. I was lucky enough to meet Ailish when I visited the Morse Bar at the Randolph in 2004. Ailish was a very warm, energetic lady but mostly I remember how kind and helpful she was to this particular Morse fan when I told her I was a fan and asked her about her experiences during the making of Morse.
She said how John and Kevin and the crew would often come to the (now) Morse Bar for a drink and a wind-down at the end of a day’s shooting and how they were all so much fun and always had her laughing. Colin Dexter would often join them as well and she said how she missed all the fun of those gatherings.
Ailish said that it was her idea to change the name of the bar to The Morse Bar and to add a Morse touch to the Bar with the wonderful photos of John, Kevin, Colin adorning the walls as well as photos from some of the Morse episodes. There is also a lovely picture of Ailish with Colin Dexter when Colin came to officially open the bar as the Morse Bar.
To add to the ‘feel’ of the bar drink menus were also done up listing a wealth of cocktails and heart-starters named after various characters from Morse. Morse’s drink included a healthy shot of whisky! Whereas the ‘Superintendant Strange’ that I had was a rather smoother, tasty cocktail.
I also spoke to another lovely lady there on my first visit (a young French woman, I think) who was also very kind and helpful to me. When I asked her to take my photo, I said you must be always being asked by Morse fans to take photos of them in the Bar, she said: “Yes but it is very good to see people follow their passions. I too loved Morse!” and she was genuinely very happy to go out of her way to help me. She also suggested I visit the Trout Inn and gave me very detailed instructions on how to get there. I followed her advice and had another happy experience – but that’s another adventure and another story!
Just to clarify something, just because my eyes are closed in the photo she took, doesn’t mean I’m dreaming about Morse. I tend to blink whenever I am photographed (at least that’s my story!)
I recommend that every Morse (or John Thaw) fan pay a visit to the Morse Bar if they are passing. Not just for the Morse memorabilia and the comfortable warm cosy atmosphere of the bar. But perhaps even more so for the friendliness of the staff. It is a very warm and welcoming place, in more ways than one.
Thanks Joe for placing that ‘Lewis’ article on the site as it has brought back a very happy memory for me. But I am very said to hear of death Ailish’s who was certainly not an elderly person and was full of life and enthusiasm when I met her. Thanks Ailish for your friendliness to this grateful Morse fan. I’m sure there are many other fans who have also experienced your kindness.
Theresa Healy
Brisbane
Australia
(Whilst on holiday back home in 1994 I was touring Oxford when I chanced upon a location shoot for the ‘Inspector Morse’ TV series. It was quite an experience.)
When John Thaw is acting, John Thaw acts exactly like John Thaw. Whatever role he plays, be it a wily, easily irritated police Inspector, or a not easily fooled newspaper editor, the delivery is the same. John Thaw. The delight in watching this man is that he is himself, without any put-on of airs or those silly acting twitches and turns so common today. Watching Inspector Morse is simply watching the real John Thaw.
What is it that makes this man so easy to understand? He’s not a snob, and he has no aspirations to be anything other than what he really is. He mixes well with the highly educated as well as with the ordinary man in the street. He fears no man - or woman. But was he like that in real life? Yes indeed. Those who knew him said he was a man you can easily admire simply because he had honest standards, but no causes he was ready to die for. He thought fox hunting a rather mindless act, more for showing off than for anything else, but he wouldn’t join the ranks of those ready to go to jail in protest of it.
Whenever I go home for a holiday I do part of the trip as if I was a tourist. I’ve toured Scotland, the Wye valley, the Cotswolds, and even walked the length and breadth of inner London. In 1989 I was touring Oxford on my own when I saw an area near one of the colleges roped off, with lorries, wires, arc lights, and all that other machinery that goes into making a TV show. Among all this I saw a restive John Thaw stretched out comfortably in a large canvas chair reading a script. I was within a few feet of him and one either gawks foolishly, or boldly goes where not many have gone before! I took the latter. ‘Mr. Thaw, I’m Ken Seymour. I’m from Canada and represent the Brits Abroad International Newsletter. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?’
He looked at me with that tired look of ‘oh no not another one’ but pulled himself forward in his chair and replied, ‘well make it quick then.’ I ducked under the cordon-tape and began a series of questions about his personal likes and dislikes. He stopped me cold. ‘No. I’m nothing like Morse. I don’t like beer and I’m not keen on classical music. I won’t discuss my limp, and yes I’m happily married. Anything else?’ ‘What were your personal thoughts on the TV production ‘A Year In Provence?’ ‘Did they actually show that awful thing in Canada?,' he asked. ‘Yes, and they tried to flog the video as well.’
We exchanged a few more words and John Thaw was called to walk through a scene with a young actress. They tried it several times when finally Thaw suggested how she should deliver a certain line so that he could react to it properly. It was an acting lesson by a superb actor. The scene was finally shot and was ‘wrapped’ as they say, in just two takes. He doesn’t like to waste time.
John Thaw passed away just a few years ago. He closed out the Morse series by dying of a heart attack. His real death was under similar circumstances. His last major series was one I love entitled, ‘Kavanagh Q.C.’ where he plays a lawyer within the British justice system of Queen’s Counsel. I remember mostly the way he looked at life. It pleased him, but also drove him crazy. It is sad to know that there will be no new series with John Thaw grinding his teeth, saying 'Oh for God's sake Lewis', or simply casting that distant look of his where he scanned the horizon, knowing, as he always did, what the truth was.
(Posted Jan 29th 2006 9:26PM by Martin Conaghan) A special two-hour drama called Lewis aired on ITV in the U.K. tonight, inspired by the immensely popular Inspector Morse novels and television series created by Colin Dexter.
It's been almost six years since viewers saw the last of the enigmatic detective Endeavour Morse (John Thaw) and his persistent sidekick Detective Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whatley), when Colin Dexter killed the character off in the final episode, The Remorseful Day, only to be followed by the sad death of John Thaw in 2002. However, the character of Lewis proved to be so popular with readers and viewers that ITV decided that it merited a follow-up series, and commissioned a one-off pilot to test the water.
I have to admit, I was cynical at first, but the quality of Morse productions in the past has never failed to hit the mark in over 30 feature-length episodes -- from the filming to the music, to the dialogue, acting and script -- not to mention to fabulous setting of Oxford in England -- and providing Carlton Productions invested the same time, effort and resources into Lewis, any fears of a watery sequel could be easily salved.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
It turns out, there was nothing to worry about; Lewis hit the mark yet again, in every way imaginable. The story picked up with Robbie Lewis returning to Oxford Police from a foreign attachment, carrying the burden of his wife's death at the hands of a hit-and-run driver three years earlier, and facing a dwindling career in police training -- but before finding himself embroiled in an investigation into the murder of a brilliant mathematics student.
Ably assisted by detective sergeant James Hathaway, a former theology student, Lewis embarks on a bewilderingly complex murder hunt and uncovers clues left by his late partner, Morse, hidden in the files of a related case from five years in the past.
The ghost of Morse was present in more than just the subtle crossword clues and Shakespearean references peppered throughout the plot; his presence was embedded in the sharp exchanges between Lewis and Hathaway, and in the sullen search for answers as Lewis slowly uncovered a complex web of deceit engulfing a wealthy car-building family and an honored university professor.
Everything Morse had, Lewis built on; including Barrington Pheloung's sumptuous and motif-ridden music, as the straight-thinking, ever-persistent detective inspector Lewis groped his way through the intellectual minefield of Hamlet references and mathematical equations, to finally catch the culprit, only to face a typically Pyrrhic ending when the murderer ignobly committed suicide.
I sincerely hope the ratings were high enough for ITV to commission more of Lewis; he's a worthy character in an all-too-rare, high-brow detective show, plodding his beat through an enchanting English landscape and topped off with production values that could put the movie industry to shame. Sunday nights would be a much better place with two hours of such high-quality drama to help round off the week.
Sheila Hancock is unaccustomed to taking days off, but last week she felt she'd earned one. "We'd been rehearsing at the theatre from ten in the morning to ten at night. At my age, I should be at home with my feet up,' she says, her eyebrows raised in mock horror.
So I had lunch with one of my grandchildren and watched daytime telly. It's what women my age should be doing, for God's sake, not working 12-hour days."
At 73, an age when most people might prefer to spend their evenings with a mug of cocoa, Sheila has taken on her first major musical role for more than a decade.
She will play Fraulein Schneider, the kindly landlady who falls in love with an elderly Jewish grocer, in a new West End production of the musical Cabaret, set in Thirties Berlin. In the 1972 Oscar-winning film version, Liza Minnelli wowed audiences as the outrageous American singer Sally Bowles.
Sheila says that playing Schneider is very much a part of her 'new life' and an attempt - four years on - to be rid of her unofficial status as the nation's favourite grieving widow.
She is slowly becoming used to life without her second husband, Inspector Morse actor John Thaw, who died from cancer of the oesophagus four years ago. They had been married, and virtually inseparable, for 28 years.
After his death Sheila wrote The Two Of Us, a critically acclaimed book that is an unflinching chronicle of grief in its rawest form. Yet she admits to being 'infuriated' by being portrayed as a tragic survivor, constantly on the brink of throwing herself on to a funeral pyre.
"Oh, I can't bear it. All this "Poor thing, she's so sad",' she says, shaking her head. "It's so tedious, this victim thing. It's such a dreadful, sentimental concept. I am not a victim - I have had a blessed life. Tough things have happened, but everyone has tough things and it's relative."
Sheila has received thousands of letters from readers of her book. "They show that one of the worst things that happens - for women, mainly, but also for men - is that when a partner dies, the survivor's life loses focus totally,' she says.
They've been so consumed with this relationship and all their friends belonged to that relationship and it's bloody difficult to rev yourself up, to recreate your life.”
"You have to say, "Well that life is now over," and you have to move on and create something different. And work, which I enjoy, is very much part of my new life."
With John Thaw, Sheila brought up three children - Melanie from her marriage to the actor Alex Ross, Abigail from Thaw's first marriage and Joanna, born when Sheila was 42.
Tragically Ross, whom she married in 1954, also died from cancer of the oesophagus. Sheila herself is a long-term survivor of breast cancer.
"I've never thought, "Why me?" I've never understood why people ask that,' she says. "Well it is you, things happen, get on with it.
Sometimes I wish people wouldn't be so emotive - like when politicians show off their children and cry in public. I think, "No, I want to rely on you, I want you to be like Winston Churchill and a bulldog."
'I have loved two men profoundly'
"I cannot be doing with articles that make me look as if I've been hard done by. I've been lucky in that I met two men whom I loved profoundly. And no matter how tumultuous it was, I had that."
Leaning back in her chair, with the air of a school mistress talking to an over-indulged child, she says baldly: "You can't get to my age without people dying, that's the nature of life.
The test is how you survive it. You either survive it well or badly, and that's your choice. People can be sympathetic but they can't do it for you. You have to pull yourself together - it's a horrible phrase but it has a lot going for it."
Although book tours, literary festivals and answering 'ten box files' of letters from readers have taken up much of Sheila's life for the past two years, she sees Cabaret as a turning point. It is, perhaps, a sign that the grieving process has moved into a new phase. And part of that means returning to her natural home - the theatre.
On stage, Fraulein Schneider is not a role for the faint-hearted. In the 1972 film, the character is played by the Austrian actress Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel, who rents a room to Michael York's penniless English schoolteacher.
Sheila will perform eight times a week at the Lyric Theatre from October 10. She is the oldest actor in the production - Geoffrey Hutchings, who plays her love interest, Herr Schultz, is her younger by six years. Anna Maxwell Martin, the Bafta-winning actress playing Sally Bowles is, at 28, a mere twinkle in the eye.
Of course, Sheila does not look remotely geriatric. When we meet at her Soho club she is wearing patterned brown combat trousers with the easy grace of someone a quarter of her age. Her bobbed, white-blonde hair frequently flops in front of her green eyes, giving her the air of a slightly insecure teenager.
She fizzes with energy, like an aspirin dissolving in water, and when a pneumatic drill starts up in the street below, she leaps out of her armchair to close the window. Her posture, when she sits back down, is that of a ballerina's, so effortlessly straight-backed that you can sense everyone else in the room guiltily tensing their stomach muscles.
But, in spite of her obvious youthfulness, it must have taken enormous self-will to return to musical theatre.
"Yes," she says, a small frown-line appearing across the bridge of her nose, "it did. When they asked me to do it, I said I wanted to run through the numbers with the musical director because I wanted to be sure I could still belt 'em out. And that went all right, so I said yes.
It's not too high-kicking either. It's more of a gentle quick-step. The last time I did a high kick in the musical Gypsy (in which she appeared in 1999), I fractured my pelvis, so this time I'm being slightly more tentative."
Born to a King's Cross publican in 1933, Sheila left school at 15. Although her teachers advised her that she would almost certainly get a state scholarship to university, she never pursued it, instead going to RADA as a way of "getting away from the things that girls were condemned to in those days, which was either nursing or teaching if you were clever".
After drama college, she spent a lengthy apprenticeship in repertory theatre and went on to star in sitcoms through the Sixties. Since then, she seems to have acted in almost everything - from EastEnders to Chekhov to a Carry On film.
Genteel rage
More recently, she has become a regular contributor to the BBC2 series Grumpy Old Women, where she fumes elegantly about the discomfort of one-size tights and other such irritations. She does a good line in genteel rage.
"I'm rather surprised to find out how grumpy I am. When I go swimming, I get..." - she breaks off, clenching her fists and screwing up her face. "I just get incensed by other people. Men, when they come in, put their heads down, swim front crawl and they never ever look to see who's in front of them. In fact, far from ending up feeling relaxed, I normally come out of the pool feeling far more stressed.
"And I hate walking in the country. It's so boring, I can't bear it. I love it when I'm with my grandchildren and we have a laugh, but to walk on my own, through a field..." she spits out the word with disgust.
"I'm frightened of cows and horses and I just get bored. I'm constantly looking for signs of humanity, albeit a dry-stone wall or a ruined house or something."
But she keeps on swimming and walking regardless, partly to get fit in the run-up to Cabaret and partly because the endorphins take her mind off the occasional 'griping sadness'.
Although Cabaret is not the first time she has returned to the West End stage since Thaw's death - she appeared in The Anniversary at The Garrick in 2005, playing a monstrous mother-in-law - it is the first all-singing, all-dancing production.
First-night nerves
Unsurprisingly, Sheila is suffering the odd pang of anxiety and is having hypnotherapy to help with first-night nerves.
"I'm nowhere near as scared as I used to be because I have a much better world view now,' she says. "I mean, really, who the bloody hell cares? It's just a show. Whereas when I was younger, it was the be-all and end-all of my life.”
“I thought, "If I fail it's the end of the world." So rationally I'm in proportion, but there is a funny thing that happens, almost as though a trigger is pulled, and I get into an almost physical state of fear.
I woke up the other night and, for no reason at all, I was sweating with fear about the opening night. I really had to get a grip on myself to control it. It's almost like this monster waiting to come up and bite you and you need to keep it under control."
Fear, she says, is an almost constant presence in her life. Fear of what, I wonder?
"Just fear," she says. "I realise that the basis of my life has been feeling fearful that I'll fail, fearful that something will go wrong, fearful for my children, because as a wartime child, bad things did happen as I grew up and you're conditioned to believe that that is what life is like."
At the age of eight, Sheila was evacuated to a childless couple in Berkshire where she was mercilessly bullied by a group of local children who resented her outsider status and couldn't understand her accent.
"It was horrid. I realise now as an old lady that an awful lot of my fear and insecurity were moulded by that wartime experience, which was pretty awful..”
"One was ripped away from one's family, one was bombed and one spent an awful lot of time underground and friends were killed and scary things happened. When you don't have a mummy to go home to and say, "Help me," it's pretty scary."
She admits that, 65 years later, it is just as scary no longer being able to rely on a much-loved husband to offer a similar degree of comfort as the first night approaches.
"I miss terribly John's support. I miss his telling me, "You're getting it out of proportion, don't be daft, don't be stupid, you'll be fine."
When I used to go home (from rehearsals), all my fears would drop off me because he made them seem ludicrous. When you're on your own, the danger is you can ricochet out of control.”
"Of course," she says, "I miss him terribly still but I've moved on. I have created a new life for myself. I've moved houses, I've moved somewhere that has no association with John and I'm working. I can work whole-heartedly because I haven't got to divide my time and worry about whether he's OK.”
"I've got friends back because I was isolated with John. I really was obsessed with him and now I make a point of keeping up with friends and making new friends. I travel on my own and I eat out on my own without any qualms at all.
It's daft wanting things to be different because they aren't," she concludes with a gentle smile. "Feel sad and then move on. That's the nature of life."
Cabaret runs at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, from October 10.
A REVIEW OF CABARET WITH SHEILA HANCOCK -
By Leila (November 4, 2006)
CABARET – ‘Willkonmen, bienvenue, welcome, in cabaret, au cabaret, to cabaret!’
Performance on Saturday 4th November 2006.
As we sat waiting for the show to start the atmosphere is amazing. I am reading my theatre programme. Looking at the order the songs will come in, and trying to find out when Sheila was on. We are sitting in the upper circle looking down on the stage, they are good seats I can see the whole of the stage. On the stage is a flat which has the world WILLKONMEN on it. The O is like a spy whole, which I am a little unsure about. However people are still taking their seats and I am trying to get comfortable in mine. Then the lights went down.
The spot light hits the stage and the O opens to reveal Emcee (played by the amazing James Dreyfus, of Gimme, Gimme, Gimme,) singing Willkonmen. I am sitting there wide eyed already, enjoying myself. Ok amity I don’t really get what’s going on at first however when the singing stops the plot starts to unfold.
When Sheila enters the stage, I am watching her. At some point in Sheila’s first scene, as Fraulein Schneider, where she is showing Clifford Bradshaw (Michael Hayden) his room, the other lady in the house Fraulein Kost (Harriet Thorpe) comes into the room, followed by a naked man, and some funny comedy moments follow. Sheila’s character has to be embarrassed about this young man running around naked. I just found it funny! Also Sheila sings for the first time that evening a song called So What? I am stunned. All the time Sheila talks about only just getting through the songs, well I have to say that isn’t true. She has the Most amazing singing voice. It is the first time I have heard her sing live and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
When we meet Sally Bowles I was a little unsure, unlike most people I have never seen the film, so didn’t really know what to expect, but I thought Anna Maxwell Martin (Esther Summerson in Bleak House) was amazing. She did so well. I didn’t think she could sing but she could. The show is building.
The next time we see Sheila as is back in Fraulein Schneider’s apartments. Where she is given a pineapple by a man trying to tell her he is in love with her, Herr Schultz (Geoffrey Hutchings, Goodnight Mister Tom, Monsignor Renard, Kavanagh QC) gives her a pineapple and they sing It Couldn’t Please Me More. I found it rather funny because at one point Sheila is singing at the pineapple. It is lovely because Schneider and Schultz’s love story runs throughout the show.
At the end of the first half, the company sings Tomorrow Belongs To Me, most of the company are naked on stage apart from the young lad who is singing the song, at the end her turns and he is wearing the Nazi sign. The rise of the Nazi’s has started. The WILLKONMEN sign returns to the stage.
After the interval, Sheila returns in Scene two, where Schultz asks Fraulein Schneider to marry him. They sing a song called Married. Sheila has said in interview that when she sings this song, she thinks of John, and after hearing the song I now know why. One of the lines is ‘For you wake one day, Look around and say: Somebody wonderful married me.’ They have party to celebrate their engagement. And Fraulein Schneider and Schultz do a small dance. However later in the scene Fraulein Schneider has a long dance with a young man. Sheila amazed me by being so graceful in her dance. She does it so well, her and the young man dance all around the stage. However their love is doomed. As Schultz is a Jew and Fraulein Schneider is thinking of her livelihood.
When Cliff asks her about it Sheila sings her final number of the show What Would You Do? Again a another lovely number with a lot of emotions in it, she also has a speech saying This is my world. We are near the end of the play now and Sally Bowles sings the famous song of the show Cabaret. Then we have the finally, where all the cast come on and sing a line from one of their songs. Then the Nazi’s come on stage and knock over the world Cabaret. The show ends with the company and James Dreyfus naked with their backs to us, with snow falling. Then its time for the curtain call. My hands hurt from clapping, and the houselights go up with band still playing.
We have to leave the theatre and walk around to the stage door, as I am going in with Sharyn James Dreyfus is coming out. He says hello and wonders off into the night and I give my name to doorman. Who phoned down to Sheila to tell her I arrived, after telling me where to go we made our way down to the dressing room, we didn’t even make to the door, Sheila was stood waiting for us, waving. I had to laugh. She was already changed into trousers and top. She invited us in and told us to sit down on her bed. I had a little look around the room as I always do, and noticed that by the side of the mirror, is a photo of John. Which made me smile. Sheila asked how I was settling in, and I just can’t stop smiling at the best of time because my life is going down the right route and I told her that, she seems so pleased for me, because she knew how nervous I was of all this. We had a chat, about everything. Including why I moved to Nottingham and how I was coping living away from home, how my relationship with my mum has improved, and we joked that Sharyn keeps trying to nick some of my John Thaw DVD’s which Sheila found rather funny. She also asked me how I am coping with the work load and things like that. Then Sheila offered to get her driver to drive us back to our hotel. So we left together, after Sheila covered her makeup up because there are mice there, she showed me where the traps are and I said, what a glamour’s life, she laughed and said yeah right.
As we left the stage door, a couple of people where waiting to ask Sheila for her autograph and to have their photo taken with Sheila, she kept looking up to make sure that Sharyn and myself where still there. We got into the car, and had a chat about everything really including the demo I was last weekend in London about Top up Fees. Sharyn asked how the grandchildren are and Sheila says Jack has settled into his new school, and that Joanna is expecting her second child in March. When we arrived at the hotel Sheila got out of the car with us, and signed my theatre programme, while telling me that I could sell it on eBay. I laughed and told her I don’t sell my theatre programmes on eBay, then Sheila laughed as I showed Sharyn how to use my mobile phone to take photos, Sheila was amazed that it was a phone as well as a camera. I told Sheila I love my gadgets which I do. Sheila laughed when Sharyn told her I am a wiz with computer. I just said yeah right! Sheila then hugged and kissed us goodbye. She waved as her driver drove off.
What an amazing night? I had a wonderful time. And I want to see the show a couple more times. Before it closes or before Sheila leaves the show. I don’t usually like musicals but this one made scene to me. Some people will love it and some people will hate it. I am someone who loved it. The whole cast is amazing. Sheila said to us that one of the dancers is off ill after hurting her back and that the dancers where trying to cover it up. I wouldn’t have know. I can’t wait to go back and see it again. It was one of the best evening of this year for me.
(Disclaimer: there is more to the show that I have mentioned here, the whole show is 2hr and 15 minutes including an interval. There is more plot to it as well I have just told you about the sub-plot involving Sheila Hancock.)
Inspector Morse first aired on ITV on January 6, 1987, and at its peak boasted an audience of 18 million people.
Since that first episode entitled The Dead of Jericho there have been a further 32 episodes until the programme ended in 2002, when legendary Morse actor John Thaw died of cancer.
The series is still hugely popular today and re-runs are currently being shown on both ITV1 and ITV3. In January last year, a spin-off pilot featuring Morse's sidekick Lewis, played by Kevin Whately, right, was shown on ITV1.
The episode was so successful that a further three programmes have been filmed and are due to be aired next month.
Colin Dexter, who wrote the 13 original Morse books, had a pivotal role in shaping both the characters and the feel of the programme.
He said when the cameras first started rolling he never thought the show would be a hit, let alone still be popular, two decades later.
"I knew perfectly well that it needed the gods to smile on us for it to be a success," he said. "I think luck plays a far bigger part in life than people acknowledge. When I wrote the first book I thought that was it, but it got some good reviews, and people said why don't you try a bit harder and write another one. So I did and it went from there.
"The TV series came about because in the mid 80s there was a lot of shooting going on in police programmes like Miami Vice. There was a desire to return to a more gentle place with a more cerebral detective.
"If anyone is going to get the accolade for the programme's success it will be the supreme casting of John Thaw and Kevin Whately as Morse and Lewis.
"Also the city of Oxford itself played an active role in the show - as if it were cast with a part. Most importantly, I think the stories were stories that people enjoyed."
To coincide with the 20th anniversary, a new book entitled Endeavouring to Crack the Morse Code, which traces the journey from book to television screen, has just been published.
However, Mr Dexter admits that knowledge of some of the shows most ardent fans is too much for him.
He added: "People say to me, why did Morse do this or that in episode 24? I just don't remember! It's nice to watch it again, but it is very difficult for me to understand the plots."
As with the Morse episodes, Mr Dexter will appear in the next series of Lewis, albeit briefly in the background.
CABARET - A SECOND VIEWING - (Friday 26th January 2007, by Leila)
This time around things where a little different. For starters I had to go to University first thing Friday morning, for my Study Criminology lecture. However I had to then get from York House on one side on Nottingham to the Train Station on the other side. I made it with about five minutes before my train left at 10:30. The other thing was I was alone. I was heading to London on my own for the first time. I was a little scared but I just kept reminding myself that it was like going to Nottingham or Manchester, just a lot bigger with more people.
I found my seat on the train and settled in for the 1 hour and 45 minute journey to sunny London (it was sunny but cold). My iPod playing, I have to admit I was listening to ‘Wicked – the untold story of the wicked witch of the west.’ I have taken to this musical in a big way after reading the novel and getting the CD for Christmas. I was happy. London always seems like a really big place, and I wanted to see more of it then I have seen the last couple of times I have been. At 12.15 we pulled into King’s Cross Station and my day in London had began!
Getting of the train, I knew I had to head for the Lyric Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, where Cabaret is playing. I had to collect my ticket before a certain time otherwise they sell them on. I decided to walk, forgetting how far it is from King’s Cross, but I wasn’t in any rush so I got my guide book out, with its map and looked for the easiest route to the Lyric, and I headed that way. I like to look around a lot when I am in London and find places people aren’t really looking for. I usually end up in places Tourist don’t usually go.
As I walked towards Bloomsbury I found myself walking pasted The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Rada). I stopped for a little while and looked at those famous doors, with the comedy and tragedy masks! For some reason I started to think about John Thaw and his time there. It must have been scary. The people coming out were mostly posh, but just seemed happy to be going to the best drama school in England. I did get some funny looks, but I was in a world of my own. Rada is right next door to University College London, where a lot of medical degrees are got, and does look slightly out of place in the street, but how I would have loved to have a look around. Yet I had to move on.
On the main streets London is very, very busy however down some of the backstreets during in the day it is very quite, which might be why I like to wonder down them. Yet at the moment I have to stay to the main roads to get to Piccadilly Circus, the Lyric is at that end of Shaftsbury Avenue. I arrive at the Lyric about two hours later. Collect my ticket for that nights performance, I feel happier now to have it. So I went shopping and to get something to eat.
The doors to the Lyric open at 7:30pm. I arrive a little later than that and take my seat in the upper circle. Its good seat, as I can see the whole stage. I open my theatre programme and notice an interview with Sheila, which I begin to read however I hear the bell, signalling that there is one minute before the performance starts, so I give up for now, as it will take me about ten minutes to read. Its time to sit back and enjoy.
There is a voice over as the lights go down telling us that the part of Emcee will tonight be played by Christopher Akrill, instead of James Dreyfus. Akrill was very good as Emcee, not as good as Dreyfus had been when I saw it in November but he was good. He opens the show with Willkonmen. He has a very good singing voice and his German accent is a lot better than Dreyfus but he just doesn’t have the same stage presents as him. The dancers are amazing as always, however I am sure that the song had been shorten slightly. But if it was this could be due to time, as the show is 2hours long.
We then move onto Sheila’s first scene. I still love her singing So What? Her shaking her chest and pointing at her breasts is still funny second time around. She does seem to get a lot of the laughs through out the show, but other characters aren’t really as funny as hers. The naked man thing happens again, this time its done a little differently and I am sure that Sheila wants to laugh, we are all laughing in the audience it must be hard not too. In her first song we learn a lot about Fraulein Schneider (Sheila’s character). I really listened this time, instead of sitting there stunned. I am still amazed at Sheila’s singing voice. She is great. She leaves the stage before we start to clap.
Meeting Sally Bowles this time is a different experience. Anna Maxwell Martin has now got her part down to a fine art and is stunning in the role. The show is starting to make me thing through, Nazism is raising around them but they keep singing and dancing. Yet at the moment I am enjoying Anna sing Don’t Tell Mama followed by Mein Herr. With conversation between the two songs between Cliff and Sally. Sally ends up at Cliff room, which he rents from Fraulein Schneider. She is staying, and the price of the room goes from just 50marks to 85marks, because of this. Sheila doing the bidding in the bit is funny as she knows she can win. Once again she makes the audience laugh.
Sheila returns in Scene 8 where she sings It couldn’t please me more. With Herr Schultz (Geoffrey Hutchings). He gives her a pineapple, this performance has also changed a little. Sheila and Geoffrey looking lovingly at each other and at the pineapple through out the song, which has a bit of a Caribbean theme. Even though Schultz does say the pineapple is from California. I still found this scene funny, yet for some reason I also found it really sad too. They want to be together but don’t seem to want to get close. He is a nervous man, she is a aging lady, who has lines as “When you are as old as I am, no one is as old as I am” you just want them to get together but in your hearts you know this isn’t going to happen. As they leave the stage after each other, you are hoping for happiness.
Tomorrow belongs to me, still made me feel sick inside, at the sight and thought of the Nazi upraising. The company being naked didn’t bother me as much as it might do some people. It is all done very well and the choreography is excellent, and we mostly see their backs. It just makes me feel sad that it is happening, even through it is not real, in my heart I know some of these events have happened. Tomorrow Belongs to me is a very powerful song.
After the interval we are back at the Kit Kat Club however I am waiting for the next scene which is the scene where Schultz asking Fraulein Schneider to marry him. They have a row over it, which ends with her yelling ‘I will consider it.’ They sit on the beds, which are on stage, and sing Married. Again watching Sheila, you can almost tell she is thinking of John. She sings the song so heartfelt so does Hutchings. When they agree to marry they are holding hands. And kiss on the cheek, and throw an engagement party. Again Sheila is scene dancing with the young man, I still can’t keep my eyes of her and the dance is done so well. The scary part of this is when Ernst Ludwig a friend of Fraulein Schneider comes to the party and finds out that Schultz is a Jew. He is wearing the Nazi sign on his arm and yells at Fraulein Schneider that Schultz is Not a German, Sheila looks so scared her acting is excellent being able to convey that to the whole audience. She is now thinking of her live. Fraulein Kost reprises Tomorrow Belongs to me. it’s a very sad moment.
We then get The Money Song (Money makes the world go around, the world go around), before heading the fruit shop where Fraulein Schneider breaks up with Schultz, I wanted to cry this time around because the acting was so powerful. While Schultz sings some lines from Married Fraulein Schneider notices the Nazi’s outside and runs. It’s a sad ending to the doomed love affair.
I was more touched this time around at What Would You Do? Sheila’s final song in the show. I listened to what she was saying and although she did love Schultz she knows that she can never be with him. Cliff and Sally don’t seem to understand. She can’t do it. She needs to think of herself, with the Nazi’s coming to power, she needed to look after herself. I seem to understand more the second time around.
‘What use is sitting in your room’ the first line of Cabaret the song. Anna does it so well this time around. But I am still a little shell shocked from the scene before. We then witness Cliff leaving Berlin and the Nazi’s taking over the Kit Kat Club. All the characters walk on one by one, singing a line from one of their songs. The show ends with the company naked with falling snow in a Concentration Camp. The curtain slowly falls. No one claps. Its takes the curtain to raise and the curtain call to begin for this to happen. Sheila got the biggest cheer and was smiling. I never noticed before but some of the cast were also in the band, as well as playing their parts. The house lights go up the show is over. I head for the exit.
As I walk round the to the stage door, I notice the cold. I go in and tell the doorman who I am, and who I am to see. He phones Sheila and I have to wait a few minutes while she changes. She calls up, I sign to go in, and off I go to her dressing room. She is waiting for me in the doorway, good thing really as I would have got lost. I was getting mad with my phone as I was trying to text my friend, Sheila seemed to find it funny, she offered me a seat, and asked how things were and did I enjoy the show second time around as much as the first, all I could say was it was more emotional the second time around.. We had a long conversation before she offered to drop me at the train station. Which was out of her way but she did it anyway. As we come out of the stage door, people were waiting to tell her they had enjoyed the show. She nearly lost me as we walked towards the car. In the car we had another chat, as it takes about 15 mins to get from Lyric to Kings Cross. At Kings Cross, she got of the car with me, made sure I had everything then kissed me goodbye. With me saying ‘See you soon’.
I got on my train and went home. Arriving back in Nottingham at 1.30am. Still thinking about my Evening with Sheila Hancock. I had a great time and would do it again anytime. Sheila is amazing and I am glad that I have had the chances to see her on stage. I would like to THANK HER for that. Also THANK her publicly for the support she has given me, and the time she spends with me.
(Disclaimer; there is more to the show that I have mentioned here, the whole show is 2hr and 15 minutes including an interval. There is more plot to it as well I have just told you about the sub-plot involving Sheila Hancock.)
FANS of Inspector Morse must face reality: there simply won't be any new stories or TV series featuring the grumpy Oxford detective. Not now, not ever.
Creator Colin Dexter holds the copyright for the Morse “brand” and he's standing firm against reprising the opera-loving crossword enthusiast. It helps that the fictional inspector breathed his last in The Remorseful Day, but the power of writing meant there was always the option of penning earlier cases.
It's not going to happen. Indeed, the author has taken action to stop the policeman popping up again long after he himself has gone.
“I'm never going to let anybody else play Inspector Morse - I've put it in my will! In 100 years' time, if the planet is still going - which I doubt very much - it won't be like Sherlock Holmes, with people saying 'I preferred his interpretation.' For me, John Thaw was Morse; and I've said I'm never going to allow - while the decision is mine - anybody to take Morse's role.”
Sadly John Thaw, the face of Morse, died of cancer in 2002, less than 15 months after the death of his much-loved character.
Faithful sidekick Sergeant Lewis, played by Kevin Whately, has made an on-screen reappearance, however. There was a well-received one-off special a year ago, and three more Lewis tales are due to be screened by ITV in February and March.
Colin Dexter admits he was “very much in two minds about doing this. In fact, I made three conditions: first of all, Kevin Whately. I said 'We can promote him to commissioner of the police if you like, but it's got to be him!'”
Cases had to be anchored in Oxford; the city had as much impact on the look and feel of the Inspector Morse series as a member of the cast. “We went to Italy twice, we went to Australia once; and people said 'Nice story, but we missed Oxford.'”
The final clause allowed Colin to see each story draft and make sure everything was in keeping with the established order.
“Even then I was a little dubious,” he admits, “as the record of resurrecting programmes has not been wonderfully successful. But I think the first one was a good story; I think the three we've got are good stories. People are going to say 'It's not the same as it was with John Thaw as Morse.' Well, of course it isn't!”
Last Bus to Woodstock, published in 1975, was the first of 13 Morse novels. The detective's TV debut came 20 years ago this month, with his deathbed scenes in November 2000.
Morse was such a success that it must have been tempting to keep him forever behind the wheel of his Jaguar Mark II, driving beneath dreaming spires and bringing killers to book, than kill him off.
“I didn't kill him off,” insists his creator. “He died of natural causes! He drank far too much Glenfiddich single-malt Scotch; he tried to give up smoking every day, and he never took any exercise. If you do that kind of thing, you're going to be susceptible. Quite apart from that, we got to a feeling where we'd had so much television, so many books, so many plots . . . I felt that I - and other people too - had had enough. It was almost getting cliché-ridden. It wasn't as fresh as it was.
“I was getting older - I'm 76 now - and I got the feeling I'd said enough about the relationship between the two. I've felt that none of us, with one or two exceptions, get very much better as we get older. I felt I was getting a little weary and the neck was aching. I didn't look forward to writing in any way at all. And, quite apart from that, I didn't think the brain was up to it!”
He thinks the starring actors felt the same.
“It would take six or seven weeks; we did four a year. Four sevens are 28 weeks in the year in which they were doing nothing but Morse on the television. John and Kevin were both very anxious to do some work on the stage. I remembered John saying to me several times that he felt the stage was where he was really exercising his muscle.
“We'd had a long, long innings. I felt we'd done enough.”
Colin Dexter didn't feel an overwhelming sense of loss when Morse expired.
“I felt disappointed they'd not been able to concentrate on Lewis more. In the last book, the ending is the best chapter I ever wrote. Lewis was always way behind Morse. He'd thought that in the last case Morse had played it unfair; and he hadn't. He was trying to protect Chief Superintendent Strange, and Lewis hadn't realised this. “
“It was very sad when Strange tells him what happened. He says 'I know he never said 'thank you' to anybody, Lewis, but there was only one person he wanted, really, to think well of him - and that was you. The last two pages of the book are very moving: the fact that Morse had at last said thank you and that Lewis hadn't understood, and in his mind had thought Morse had cheated on the integrity he normally displayed. That was the thing that upset me a bit.”
However, he accepts that in TV not all things are possible: especially when a book of 360 pages or so has to be condensed into less than two hours.
Colin knows why the chief inspector appealed to so many viewers and readers. Morse was politically on the left, an atheist, and had a dim view of his superiors' competency. “This is not unusual in life, and I think people liked this.
“He was a very vulnerable man in some ways; and, more important than being vulnerable, he was sensitive: certainly to poetry and certainly to music. People were interested that he didn't seem to get on all that well with the women. He fell in love, quite often with the crooks. This man with his faults and failings, and especially his meanness with money, people loved that - a little bit quirky. But above all he was extraordinarily able; he had an alpha-plus acumen mind and he was often on the wrong racetrack, but he had a sergeant who would put him right. People loved the relationship between Morse and Lewis.”
The author says Morse is three-quarters or four-fifths based on his own personality.
“Unless you're a genius, which I'm not, you tend to be semi-autobiographical - you've nothing else to go on, really.”
He insists, though, that he doesn't share the detective's legendary miserliness. “I'm very generous when I go in the pub! The only reason I made him mean is that when I came to Oxford 40 years ago I did meet many people who really auditioned for the meanest man in the world. There were certainly two people who I used to work with frequently who were dreadful!”
As frequently happens, there were some changes when book made the leap to screen.
In the text, Lewis is a similar age to his boss - and a Welshman, not a northerner. But it worked well, and Colin credits people such as producer Kenny McBain and casting director Ted Childs, among others, for getting it so right. He's full of praise, too, for the way ITV has treated him and his “baby”.
Another difference between book and box was the transformation of Morse's car to the Jaguar. “It changed because they couldn't find a clapped-out Lancia!” The 1962 Jaguar was on the front of the TV Times in January, 1987, with Thaw and Whately, and rapidly became an icon.
Life for Colin Dexter hasn't ground to a halt since Morse moved on, though it did bring an end to his Hitchcockesque cameos: brief roles such as “Man in Wheelchair in Saga Group at Magdalen Bridge” and “Man with Crutches in Hospital Waiting Room”.
Life, though, is still busy. “I think I spent a little more time mowing the grass,” he smiles. There's a lot of voluntary work for charities helping diabetics, people with heart problems, and the deaf.
Then there are invitations to literary festivals: spring and early autumn are particularly busy in that respect.
This very evening he's at a church roof fund-raiser in a nearby village. “I'm not going up to the roof and repairing it myself,” he chuckles, “but I'll make them laugh. I know a lot of jokes. I'm very sorry if they've been there the week before, because they'll get exactly the same thing! But I very much enjoy putting something back into life from the charity point of view.”
But for a health setback and a rainy holiday we might never have met Inspector Morse.
Cambridge University graduate Colin Dexter taught Classics from 1954 to 1966 before his career in the classroom was curtailed by deafness.
He moved to Oxford - where he and wife Dorothy live in a semi-detached home - and worked for the local examinations board. In 1973 the couple and their children - Sally and Jeremy, both now in their mid 40s - were on holiday in a small house in Wales.
“Since my family were all for going home, and telling me that other children's fathers invariably took them to places where 'the sun was shining, the sea was warm and you could catch crabs, and why don't we go home?' I locked myself in and started writing,” he remembers.
During the break, he'd read two detective novels he found in the house, hadn't thought much of them, and believed he could do almost as well. Escaping from grumbling children presented ideal motivation.
People talk about plots and characterisation, he says, but it's a cracking story that's crucial, he argues. “This is the only thing I worried about. I think if I had any success at all, it's because people wanted to know what happened in the next chapter.”
Publisher Collins passed on Last Bus to Woodstock, so Colin sent it to the senior crime editor at Macmillan, Lord Hardinge [correct] of Penshurst. Within 48 hours he'd had a phone call saying the company was going to publish the book, warts and all.
Colin, a man with a keen sense of humour and a twinkle in his eye, jokes of Hardinge: “He had been in bed with 'flu, they told me later on. Whether this had affected his judgement in any way I'm not at all sure . . . But it was a bit of luck.”
He points out that the Richard Adams classic Watership Down was rejected 13 times, and George Orwell's seminal Animal Farm 23 times.
The legend of Morse took a while to build. Only about 5,000 copies were published of that first story - one of the reasons that copies nowadays change hands for a small fortune. “I know they had to 'remainder' some,” says Colin. “Then they rang me up and said did I want 125 copies, because they were either going to bury them, burn them, whatever it was. They said 'It's all right. Give £5 to the driver who brings them, because he's coming up your way.'
“I said to my wife 'Do you want any more copies of Last Bus to Woodstock?' and she said 'Well, you've been round every shop in Oxford, buying them. We can't have any more books in this household!' And so I didn't take them.
“Last time I saw, one was sold for £1,500. So just for an outlay of £5 to a lorry driver . . . My arithmetic is not so good . . . but if I'd put them in the loft that would have been good, wouldn't it? Nearly £200,000. Anyway, we all make a few mistakes!”
The second Morse, Last Seen Wearing in 1976, was well-received, “and someone suggested I try to make it a hat-trick”. Colin was still working full-time, so writing time was limited.
“Unless I had a lot of work to do for the next day, I would always write at the same time: from The Archers finishing until going out for a few pints of beer at about a quarter past nine. If you write one page a day, it's amazing how many you write in a year, isn't it?”
He pauses. “Although I didn't know anything about the way the police worked, or about the criminological mind, at least I knew Oxford. And the only reason I wrote was to entertain the reader. I've never had anything else in mind.”
Colin Dexter and Ted Childs - whose career as a director and producer and executive producer includes The World At War, The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and Peak Practice - are speaking in Chelmsford on March 7 as part of the 2007 Essex Book Festival. They will be interviewed by Mike Ripley, who lives near Colchester and who pens the popular Angel series of comedy thrillers.
It's a mystery that even Inspector Morse would have found difficult to solve? Why has his loyal sidekick Lewis suddenly been transferred to a defunct police force? The two detectives were always portrayed as Thames Valley Police officers as they tracked down criminals in the classic TV series. But fans will be astonished to discover that Lewis, who returns in a spin-off TV series of his own next Sunday, is now employed by Oxfordshire Constabulary, which was actually abolished when it amalgamated with neighbouring forces to form Thames Valley Police in 1968.
Morse's dramatic death in 2000 - he collapsed on the lawn of an Oxford college in the final episode - pulled in more than 13million viewers. John Thaw, the actor who played him, died of cancer two years later at the age of 60. In the new three-part series, the newly promoted Det Insp Lewis, played by Kevin Whately, is a widower, living alone in Oxford and anxious to prove he is as skilled as his former boss in nicking villains. In the first episode, which co-stars Gina McKee, he investigates the murder of a young female student in a hotel.
Programme makers have a number of theories about why Lewis has been assigned a police force that no longer exists. One is that Thames Valley's newly appointed Acting Chief Constable, Sara Thornton, is no great admirer of TV detective dramas. Another is that it is connected to security and the Iraq war. The Mail on Sunday launched its own investigation after the series' executive producer, Ted Childs, revealed he had been banned from filming at Morse's old headquarters, St Aldate's police station in Oxford city centre - even though the building bears a plaque commemorating the long friendship between the detective and the force.
"Sadly this time Thames Valley felt they were no longer able to co-operate," Mr Childs said. "I think it was a Home Office directive - something to do with threats or terrorism, but it seemed a bit silly to us. So we've had to create a totally artificial police force." Morse's creator, crime writer Colin Dexter, said: "It was probably the result of a Home Office interdiction because of what is happening in Iraq, where people dressed in genuine uniforms pretend they are police but in fact turn out to be terrorists."
But last night the Home Office insisted no such instruction exists. And the Association of Chief Police Officers said decisions of that kind were normally taken by forces on an individual basis.
Thames Valley Police denied the decision had anything to do with Ms Thornton's appointment.
But a spokesman put forward another - rather more prosaic - theory for the ban on filming at St Aldate's. He said: "It could be because there is a lot of refurbishment going on there. Filming on the inside can be quite disruptive.
"Anyway, Morse and Lewis are associated more with Oxford than Thames Valley, so I don't think it makes much difference, really."
MY first encounter with Kevin Whately was on a dark and wintry night the best part of 20 years ago. He and Manchester star John Thaw were promoting a new series of Inspector Morse films. It was to be one of many meetings with the pair.
Never quite at ease at being interviewed – well, who in their right mind would be? – Kevin nevertheless always answers questions as openly and honestly as he can. He still misses his former co-star and friend John, who died of cancer in February 2002.
I spoke to Kevin again at a service to remember the Burnage-raised actor later that year, when he recalled Thaw’s “mischievous sense of fun”. The Geordie actor was naturally nervous about returning to the role of Oxford detective Robbie Lewis for a pilot film last year, this time as the leading man.
Now he’s back next Sunday in the first of three more Lewis stories.
Speaking at the launch of the new films a few weeks ago, former Auf Wiedersehen, Pet star Kevin was still refreshingly honest about his doubts.
“John had an attack in his voice, which I’ve never got. So you have to find a different way of driving it along. He just had this extra gear in his voice, which was really impressive. And nobody ever mentions it because he was such a fine actor and the voice was all part of it – a really important part for Morse. He could steam into somebody and reduce them to wreckage in one sentence. A very powerful voice.”
Lewis again co-stars Laurence Fox as sidekick Det Sgt James Hathaway, who gets some of the best lines in the new films. “Part of Lewis’s function originally in the Morse films was the audience viewed this strange Morse character though his eyes sometimes, because he was the normal, down-to-earth, everyman character. And we can’t change that too much,” added Kevin. “We’ve got the Hathaway character in now who’s almost a kind of prototype Morse –
a brilliant Cambridge student with a spiritual side. I think Lewis has always been a good cop, but we can’t suddenly turn him into Sherlock Holmes.”
JUST as in his life, there's no escape from Inspector Morse, even six years after he was killed off on screen. "Memories flood back all the time," reflects Kevin Whately, who played Morse's sidekick, back next weekend as Lewis (ITV1, Sunday, 9pm).
"In one of the films this year we were in Exeter quad, where Morse collapsed with his heart attack, and you remember that. But I'm not aware of John peering over my shoulder," smiles Kevin.
That's Burnage-raised John Thaw, who died from cancer in February 2002 at the age of 60 and is still much missed. It's exactly 20 years since Det. Chief Insp Morse solved his first TV case, alongside Kevin as Robbie Lewis. More than 11m viewers watched the pilot episode of Lewis in January 2006, with the same titles, composer, writers and production team.
The spirit of "querulous" Morse continues to feature in three new films - and Geordie actor Kevin says that's just how it should be. "He gets a mention in all of them and in the pilot he was actually part of the plot. "We are hoping to develop an identity, but you can't go too far because it's Oxford and the same character - Lewis. I wouldn't want them not to tip the cap to Morse every now and then."
Kevin again teams up with young partner Det Sgt James Hathaway, played by Laurence Fox, the actor who just happens to be currently dating Billie Piper, as well as starring in a stage tour with her. Det. Insp. Lewis is still alone following the death of his wife Valerie in a hit-and-run incident.
He's toying with taking an Open University degree, but throws himself into a new murder mystery involving Greek mythology and a group of former Oxford University students. Kevin, 56, has made no secret of the fact that he had to be talked into going back to the role for last year's pilot. "With hindsight, I don't know why I was so reticent. I'm enjoying the different kind of challenges of it.
"I thought that Morse was a fascinating character and Lewis was very much the sounding board, the everyman. And it's quite difficult to make a character like that suddenly interesting enough to carry two hours of prime-time telly. I was mostly persuaded by my wife, who said, 'Look, you have to drive it, so it would be like a different job'. And that's what if feels like."
Those huge ratings for the pilot also eased a few fears. "It's dangerous to get complacent, but it takes the curse off it. I think there were a lot of loyal Morse fans who tuned in - and hopefully will again this time. You think, `People do want to see more stories and they still enjoy the locations and the characters'. A lot of people in the business were thinking, as I was, 'Oh, is this a good idea?' But they all said they thought it worked."
The first story - Whom The Gods Would Destroy - features a familiar face to soap fans. Catherine Linn, wife of a college principal, is played by Sasha Behar, better known as Coronation Street's Mad Maya. Also guest starring are Anna Massey and Anna Madeley. That's followed by Old School Ties, written by Alan Plater, featuring Gina McKee as Lewis's ex-girlfriend and Owen Teale as a professional northerner, which sickens the Oxford cop.
"It was something new for me to play," explains Kevin. "Lewis has severed all his ties with his Newcastle roots and never goes back, whereas I love the north and still have some family up there. I'm afraid I am a professional northerner, and I'm quite proud of it." He recently took up a new role as a grandfather when his daughter Kitty gave birth to baby girl Ivy. "I'm enjoying it very much. She's absolutely gorgeous. I couldn't be prouder," he says.
Four more films are due to be made this summer but the former Auf Wiedersehen, Pet star doesn't think Lewis will approach the 33 episodes of Morse, before his screen death in 2000. "Morse went on for 14 years - and I'm getting perilously close to the retirement age for policemen. But we hope we can make a few films, as long as the stories are good."
As for that 20th anniversary for Morse: "It is astonishing, but it doesn't feel that long. My mum's in hospital at the moment so I watched one with her yesterday afternoon. To me, when Lewis comes on, it's my son walking in the door. It's a totally different person."
