A REVIEW OF INSPECTOR LEWIS - (by Judy Adamson, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2/12/08, article courtesy of Theresa) -
Inspector Morse spin-off allows nice guy Lewis to cultivate his inner curmudgeon:
MORSE CODE - (by Graeme Blundell, The Weekend Australian, 2/16/08, article courtesy of Theresa) - Back in Oxford and equipped with an erudite sidekick, Lewis tries to follow in the footsteps of his mentor:
A CLASS DOUBLE ACT - (The Telegraph 2/23/08, article courtesy of Janet) -
As Lewis returns for a new series, its stars Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox tell Serena Davies about pulling faces, crazy plotlines and their on-screen rapport
Lewis, heir to Inspector Morse, can confidently lay claim to being the classiest, most civilised detective series on British television. Its usually bloodless murders, spread leisurely across each episode’s luxurious two-hour time slot, take place amid Oxford’s stately spires, and are explicable by only the most erudite reference points – Nietzsche, Shelley and Wagner among them. After a triumphant first two runs – the pilot alone netted 11.4 million viewers, making it ITV’s most popular single drama of 2006 – its back for another, starting this Sunday on ITV1.
KEVIN WHATELY ON HIS ROLE AS INSPECTOR LEWIS - (article courtesy of Janet) -
Whately, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, abandoned a future as an accountant to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He has been acting since the late '70s and has appeared in numerous television programs as well as films.
LAURENCE FOX ON HIS ROLE AS JAMES HATHAWAY - (article courtesy of Janet) -
Trained at RADA, Laurence Fox is the son of actor James Fox, the cousin of actress Emilia Fox and the nephew of actor Edward Fox and producer Robert Fox. His credits to date include roles in Masterpiece/Mystery titles Miss Marple: The Sittaford Mystery, Jericho, Island of War and Foyle’s War.
NO MORE NICE GUY - (2/23/08, article courtesy of Janet) - As the lead actor in his own television series, Kevin Whately can’t afford to get ill. Which is why he is being very cautious (and touching a lot of wood), when he reveals that Laurence Fox, his co-star in Morse spin-off Lewis “has had three colds in the last month.”
EXPLOSION ROCKS HOUSE (BUT ITS ALL FOR LEWIS) - (by Chris Kearney, Oxford Times, August 28, 2007) -
A house in Jericho - 31 Nelson Street - was rocked by three explosions in the early hours of this morning.
(Extras for the new series of Lewis, from left, Hayley Jones, Amy Standish and Gary Turland)
SIDE BY SIDEKICK - (by Benji Wilson, September 28, 2007, Radio Times) - Once the stooge, now the star - Kevin Whately is forging an enduring
relationship with "a young Morse", his Lewis sidekick Laurence Fox.
POUNDING HIS OWN BEAT - (by Helen Tsitouris, March 8, 2008, Queensland Sunday Mail, article courtesy of Theresa) -
Lewis successfully picks up where Inspector Morse left off…
LEWIS FEELS THE STRAIN OF HEAVY ROLE - (2/23/08, article courtesy of Janet) -
It's amazing that Oxford has any residents left, let alone brilliant academics and troubled professors, but the series that bumps them off with such aplomb is back with a bang.
LEAP OF FAITH FOR FOX - (by Sue Yeap, The West Australian, Perth, 2/27/08, article courtesy of Janet) -
Laurence Fox is battling a cold and delaying getting out of bed despite the fact he has to attend an audition. He’s not long back from his honeymoon with new wife Billie Piper but I have been warned by publicists not to discuss Fox’s personal life or relationship.
Next: Inspector Lewis Gallery
Mild-mannered DS Lewis was never as fascinating as his curmudgeonly partner Inspector Morse - the hard-drinking, music-loving intellectual played so memorably by John Thaw. Yet Lewis (Kevin Whately) always had his charms: a straight-talking, unpolished family man, who rubbed along beautifully with Morse, whether solving crime or having a pint in one of Oxford's many pubs.
Being a bit of a fan, I had my doubts: was it wise to resurrect Morse's ghost by creating a spin-off series around the now-Inspector Lewis. However, initial signs are promising.
To ensure a nice guy like Lewis could cultivate his inner curmudgeon, the writers have bumped off his wife Valerie in the years between Morse's death and the start of this story. After two years in the British Virgin Islands, Lewis comes home to find his (female) boss wants to sideline him at a training college. Happily, he and the refined "God-bothering" sergeant (Laurence Fox), who picks him up at the airport, stop by a murder scene on the way to the office and Lewis the investigator is off and running.
There are a number of Inspector Morse references for fans to enjoy but you don't need to have loved Morse to enjoy the clever plot and excellent characterisations
"INSPECTOR Morse," Sergeant Lewis shouted hoarsely at his prime suspect, "is dead." That was almost eight years ago. And I can still recall actor Kevin Whately's anguished face as the celebrated British crime series ended.
Morse, the cranky old Thames Valley police detective played by the equally redoubtable John Thaw, had been claimed by his creator, Colin Dexter. The series, based on Dexter's labyrinthine novels, ended because the author had run out of ideas.
"I'm now going to get on with all the other things I've neglected, like mowing grass and enjoying a nice pint," the former national crossword champion said. (By the end, Dexter had beaten William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen in terms of vocabulary, having used 11,582 different words.)
It was easy to understand Whately's despair. How could any performer not be upset after appearing in the most successful English crime series? The most lushly produced, too. It attracted audiences of more than 15 million people in Britain alone, and millions more across the world, establishing Oxford as a wondrous place of dreaming spires and high-class murder.
With its celebrated criminal plots of bizarre dubiousness, Morse lasted 13 years through 33 feature-length stories and 81 deaths (an average of 2.45 per adaptation). The series ran for more than 56 hours. And the brilliant loner, so susceptible to the charms of women of a certain age, became a national treasure, feted on postage stamps, tourist walks and, aptly, as the answer to a clue in The Times crossword.
But on television life always goes on, imitated and ransacked by art. Last week we saw the inevitable spin-off of the Morse series, a special two-hour drama, Lewis, which picks up five years after the series ended.
Following the death in 2000 of his melancholic mentor, Sergeant Lewis was promoted to inspector and took a two-year sabbatical in the British Virgin Isles. Newly widowed, he returns to Oxford. Lewis and his new partner, young Detective Sergeant Hathaway (Laurence Fox), immediately embark on a bewilderingly complex murder hunt, uncovering clues somehow left by Morse, hidden in the files of a related case from five years in the past.
Not only does Morse's ghostly presence hover but Shakespeare's Hamlet floats wraithlike and a little infuriatingly through the episode, along with the trademark crossword clues, obtuse mathematical equations and serpentine plotting of the earlier series, as well as a typically Pyrrhicconclusion.
This week, in Whom the Gods Would Destroy, Lewis and Hathaway hunt the killer of an artist bludgeoned to death aboard his houseboat, a murder involving a group called the Sons of the Twice Born. Named after an epithet of Dionysus relating to his birth, their activities are shrouded in Greek codes, quotes from Nietzsche, and a Dionysian fondness for drugs.
The title is part of a quotation from Euripides, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad", and the episode is so fiendishly complicated and riddled with allusions, you feel you too are being driven barmy by its complexities. Literary onanism is a clever hook, but it can make your eyes glaze over.
Dexter once described the way his style works as "an aggregation of circumstances" and Lewis methodically employs the same modus operandi: the plots are painstakingly pieced together, with few red herrings or cliffhangers.
The plots involve the very wealthy and their lovely houses, the social disorder driven by personal, rather than social, factors. Like Morse before him, Lewis's Oxford is full of domestic and professional jealousies and passions rather than urban dislocation and violent subcultures.
It's a long way from TV copland's obsession with terrorists, international gangs and psycho killers working their way violently through nihilistic plots, captured by convulsive, vertigo-inducing handheld camera shots.
Lewis, like Morse before it, is only about murder of the highest quality. Like the earlier series, Lewis succeeds in making us feel smugly discerning during its two hours, using its literary suggestiveness to permeate the drama with an intellectual high-mindedness, most of it carried by the new boy Hathaway, a tall, thin former divinity student turned fast-track detective, a kind of embryonic Morse.
Hathaway, slightly embarrassed by his learning, doesn't want it to come between him and salt-of-the-earth Lewis, but his modesty can't help him from upstaging Lewis, just as the latter once quietly showed up Morse. (And it's not justthe yellow hair and ties Hathaway sports.)
It's a nice irony and Fox works it skilfully. His almost Wodehousian portrayal of Hathaway barely controls a compulsion to play the intellectual joker with an almost frantic desire to do the right policing thing.
Fox plays Hathaway with a lethal vocal deadpan delivery, fast and almost insolent, and employs a tightly controlled repertoire of slanting glances and wry smirks. The son of actor James Fox, cousin of actor Emilia Fox and nephew of actor Edward Fox, Laurence may just be a bigger star than them all.
Hathaway steals the show right away from Lewis, who, poor bugger, manages little more than a curmudgeonly glumness. The show's writers have given him little of interest except a kitchen he can't use and a need to prove to himself and to his superiors, especially his hardline boss Jean Innocent (Rebecca Front), that he still can do his job.
With Morse gone, Whately has nothing to bounce off or even to be resigned to or annoyed about. What he does possess, though, is a nicely well-worn face, rumpled and fatigued, and a no-nonsense British acting style that always commands respect. When he acts he hardly reacts at all, fixing his concentration on the moment approaching. Serious acting, English style.
A decade ago I was occasionally heard to mutter about "Inspector Morse moments" when life seemed like a giant crossword puzzle. Now I feel "a bit of Lewis and Hathaway coming on" whenever I encounter unexpected dead ends and people who aren't what they seem.
Still, you’d be hard put to find many airs and graces in the programme’s two stars: Kevin Whately, who plays the eponymous old-timer detective, and Laurence Fox, who appears as his erratic, if precociously clever, sidekick, DS Hathaway. Both are modest to a tee, and apparently devoid of ambition.
“In the old days I just stood in the background pulling faces,” says Whately, pondering, with some nostalgia, the 13 years he spent as a lackey to the late John Thaw’s Inspector Morse. “Now I have to drive the thing a little more!”
With Lewis promoted and Morse passed on, these days it’s newcomer Hathaway’s turn to “pull faces”. Which is a lucky thing, claims Fox (son of actor James), since he’s incapable of doing long serious speeches anyway: “I’m better at being snide in the background, looking a bit snootily at people and laughing at Lewis’s occasionally bad jokes.” And when they aren’t on air, Fox plays the jester to amuse the cast and crew, even forcing Whately to tell him to “shut up” when he’s still in the middle of a long joke as the cameras are about to roll. “You know, I’d just rather have a good time than I would be Daniel Day-Lewis,” Fox explains. “There ain’t no method to my acting.”
Of course, the actors do also take Lewis seriously. Whately, a seasoned professional whose regular turn as Neville Hope in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet first endeared him to the nation, by all accounts brings a quiet authority to both the set and the role. And 29-year-old Fox’s CV proves he’s not just in the acting business to lark about – it includes a surprisingly charming, socially capable Cecil Vyse for ITV1’s recent version of A Room with a View and a praised performance in a West End theatrical run opposite his now-wife, Billie Piper.
But some levity is justified simply because this programme was never meant to appeal as gritty, realistic police drama – of the ilk of Rebus, say, or the bloodthirsty Messiah.
“Colin [Dexter, the creator of Inspector Morse, and still involved with the show] has never been to a police station. I’ve been in one or two,” says Whately, of his distinctly relaxed approach to research. “The programme was always conceived as fantasy, it was not meant to be realistic. I think the police themselves like Morse and Lewis because we don’t try to be real.”
Whately also thinks the setting adds to the fanciful air. “The thing is some of the characters you meet around the colleges at Oxford – the dons and fellows and what have you – are far more outrageous than anything we could portray on screen. I always feel you can slightly get away with these outrageous convoluted plots because theirs are the sorts of brains that might come up with them.”
The latest plots are indeed far-fetched. In the first episode, the discovery of a corpse in the Bodleian library turns out to be connected to an autistic genius’s ability to mimic the handwriting of 19th century poets without realising he’s making forgeries. Another instalment builds links between illegal boxing matches in Oxford and the past activities of the Stasi. A third tells of a weird religious group, The Garden that believes it can “cure” gay people of their sexual orientation.
This last storyline offers the opportunity to flesh out the bones of DS Hathaway’s character a little more, and give a few clues as to why this ex-priest became a policeman in the first place. It also brings up the question of his own sexuality, not that Fox thinks this is a legitimate topic of discussion, “All I have to say on the ‘Is Hathaway gay?’ question is that it’s nobody’s business,” he says.
This touches on a central point of Lewis and Inspector Morse before it. If the murder mysteries are outlandish, the foil to this is that the policemen, both very private individuals, aren’t. They also have a plausible rapport. “I think it should be 80 per cent, even 90 per cent, about the murder storyline,” says Fox, “and 10 per cent about Kevin and me, but that 10 per cent is almost as important as the 90 per cent. The thing is to have a really believable relationship between the two coppers.”
It’s lucky then that Whately and Fox get on so well off-screen. Fox heaps praise on his senior partner, and Whately was only too willing to do his own stunt when the script required he carry the 6’ 3” Fox down a staircase, out of a burning house. There’s a general camaraderie on set, peopled by many of the same technicians from the Inspector Morse days that Fox likens to “a family Sunday lunch”. Which is surely the perfect atmosphere for the filming of one of TV’s most popular Sunday night dramas.
Kevin Whately owes his role as Lewis to an out-of-town theatrical flop. After the success in the early 1980s of the British television series Auf Wiedersehen Pet (in which he played the role of Neville Hope), Whately met John Thaw to read for the part of Robbie Lewis. Whately remembers his meeting with Thaw, original producer Kenny McBain and casting director Michelle Guish.
"I thought I wouldn't be able to appear in Morse anyway, because at the time I was out of town in a comedy directed by Ray Cooney. We thought it would come into the West End for a long run -- but luckily it flopped in somewhere like Hornchurch or Bromley and left me free to be Lewis! I've always liked the character, so now we'll see how audiences react to his return."
Five years after he was last seen as Lewis, a role which occupied him in 32 Inspector Morse films over a 14 year period, Whately has returned to both the role and to Oxford.
"People had talked about it; it had been suggested for years and I had pooh-poohed it. It wasn't until (executive producer)Ted Childs actually said 'How about this?' that I thought seriously about it. I have huge respect for Ted and the idea had come originally from ITV drama executive producers Michele Buck and Damien Timmer who I knew well; the fact I knew all of them and producer Chris Burt, and trusted them, was a big factor.
Russell Lewis' story and Stephen Churchett's script had the ghost of Morse flitting around, which I liked. With the sheer number of detectives on TV, you are constantly being offered new cop roles, several a year. But when this came up, you think, 'There's a back story and people like the Lewis character,' so you've got a head start. The Morse films had a quality to them which is maybe unusual these days, and Michele promised me it would have the same production values which made a huge difference."
But Lewis as an inspector has a long history in the annals of the Morse films.
"The idea of Lewis being an inspector goes way back to Geoff Case's script for Who Killed Harry Field in 1991; the subsidiary story throughout that film was 'Could Lewis be an inspector?' and Morse saying 'No, I don't think so,' when actually Morse knew fine well that he could but didn't want to lose him.
If Lewis hadn't got his promotion, he probably would have gone off into private security or one of those jobs, like a lot of police officers do. But it's very obvious in this film that, like Morse, he loves investigating murders and being at the sharp end of police work. It is quite a fiendish plot, and I love the fact that maths are involved; that's quite Morseian."
But Whately admits that he ignored the fact that he was playing the eponymous role.
"It never occurred to me, so my shoulders weren't weighed down! We were working at such a speed. It did seem a slightly more frenetic pace than used to be on Morse, maybe just because I had much more to do. So I didn't have time to think 'Oh God, I wish John was taking the weight!'"
Talking about the new partnership with Laurence Fox's James Hathaway, Whately explains.
"Hathaway is a hugely bright young cop, the sort of graduate policeman that Lewis wouldn't like very much, and obviously he has a hot line to the superintendent and seems to be her man. So he doesn't trust him from that point of view. But gradually, and I think quite subtly over the length of the film, they gain a mutual respect. It sounds a bit of a cliché, but I think it's well done. I think there's a lot of potential there. Both Lewis and Hathaway are nice people; I think we'd have to ginger it up for the future. I think it works fine in this story because there is a bit of grit in the relationship."
After his five-year absence, Lewis is back in a new world where women are in the police hierarchy:
"Morse never quite related to women as human beings; he tended either to fall in love with them or stick them in prison because they were murderesses -- or both! But Lewis has always seemed absolutely relaxed and fine with women."
Though it was back in front of the cameras in Oxford for the first time since he and many of the crew filmed The Remorseful Day, Whately had visited the university city in the intervening years.
"I fronted the Magdalen Bridge restoration appeal a few years ago, and have been involved with a few other Oxford charities, including a children's home north of the city. But we hadn't really done much in Wadham College in the past films; there's still quite a lot of Oxford that we haven't shot in -- or that didn't invite us. This time they let us have our location base right in the middle of the city by the Radcliffe Camera, which we used to do on the very early Morses before they banished us down to the station yard! But Oxford is good to shoot in because wherever you point a camera looks great, and the light is always nice because of the Cotswold stone. I asked very early on if we could get as many of the core team people; most of them are pals and they are the best. They were always the top people on Morse."
In contrast with Hathaway, Lewis can be seen as old-fashioned when it comes to new technology, something with which Whately sympathizes.
"Sending emails from your hand, as Hathaway does, really astonishes me... I can't stand people being able to get hold of me at the drop of a hat. I guess I am a bit of a technophobe; things like computers tend to go wrong and if you can't fix them, then you spend your whole life waiting for somebody to come and sort you out. I've got by very happily for 50 plus years without! I don't need it! I don't want it!"
How about being reunited with Lewis's creator, Colin Dexter?
"It was fab; he was on the set a lot when we were in Oxford and you could tell it was just such a buzz for him to be back. But it did take quite a few takes for us to do our scene with Colin as a college scout... I can't remember why. It's got to have been Colin's fault and if it wasn't, I am saying that it was; especially if it was my fault!"
Despite the fact that he was unfamiliar with Morse history, when he took on the role of James Hathaway, Lewis's new partner, Laurence Fox was instantly at home in Oxford.
"Kevin took me around Oxford, into little chapels and pubs, and would talk about the colleges and the quads, I'm an obsessive flesh-eater, so he showed me places where you could get really great barbecue! The minute you see that face, you trust him and you want to go for a beer with him. Kevin's a great guy. He's keen on the truth and understanding what other people think. He's not totally different from my own father. Though Kevin and I come from totally different backgrounds, and have incredibly different politics as well, not once did we have an argument about anything.
"On my first day, I just strolled in like this was brand new... I had no context for the history of Morse, other than when I was acting, to defer to the idea that what happened before was obviously very important to Kevin's character, Lewis. I allowed my character to believe that, in the police force that he worked for, this guy was a legend."
Fox had family ties to his character, the theology student turned fast-track detective.
"My sister is a theology graduate from Cambridge, and my older brother briefly considered becoming a priest. So what research there was came around the kitchen table! So much of this has to come from your instinctive reaction to a script. In some examples, research can be very helpful, but I often find it can hurt and hinder you, because you think, 'I don't know anything, I'm screwed! The script was good enough for me to know what Hathaway was like and to get a very strong sense of him."
But Fox says he shared a secret with his character.
"I decided that something had happened to Hathaway -- which is why he hadn't continued on the path of becoming a priest. He tells Lewis that he was too frivolous for the priesthood. That's a lie; he's just not telling the real reason. I've got my reason -- which is my secret and his. Hathaway is hard-working, diligent and seeks approval. As a young actor like me, who has managed to have some success early on, you develop a sense of confidence beyond your experience; Hathaway's probably got that as well. He's not exceptional. He's got a very real vulnerability and he does respect other people's opinion. He's a secretive sort of guy. I don't sense that he likes people to know a lot about him. He would rather give nothing away."
James Hathaway is a great advocate of new technology, forever using his Blackberry in the course of his police duties. But this ability has not rubbed off onto Fox.
"I've just learnt how to email, but I don't know how to attach things. I like it that way... I really like being without it; I don't want to become dependent on it."
What does Hathaway think of having a women boss in Jean Innocent (played by actress Rebecca Front)?
"She likes him; he's hard working and doesn't get in the way. He's a modern, politically correct creature. He's totally un-Establishment. For him, if women can do the job, then fine. It's the world I grew up in, where I've had women bosses, like he has. He doesn't turn on the charm for anyone. But he does start to respect this guy Lewis."
Kevin is more than aware of how many people are relying on him. In the wake of John Thaw’s death and the Morse finale, ITV are putting a great deal of faith in the new show, which began as a pilot last year and now continues with four films, beginning on ITV1 tomorrow.
“I said ‘Can we just do the one and see how it goes?”’ remembers the 56-year-old of the moment the channel top brass came and asked him if he would consider bringing Morse’s upbeat Geordie sidekick back to the small screen.
“It got super-high ratings and straight away we were on a rollercoaster. It snowballs away so it’s been pretty hectic, I’ve barely had a chance to breathe.”
“You’re aware of what a huge juggernaut it is,” he continues. “It’s a huge responsibility from the point of view of trying to keep it on track.” He says. “And not to fall to bits and catch colds and things like that.”
Despite the popularity of Morse, bringing his sidekick back was still a gamble, especially since Lewis was always more of a happy-go-lucky sort, the grafter to his boss’s genius. Lewis Mark II is a different guy. His wife Valerie has been killed in a hit-and-run accident and he has a new protege of his own, a posh former trainee priest played by Fox.
“I think the character is slightly more abrasive,” explains Kevin of the new look lead. “We were rather easy-going last year, quite chummy but this time around Laurence and I have a couple of bust-ups over different things – lack of trust and all that malarkey – to make our relationship less cosy.
“It took quite a few years on Morse with John before they started having set-tos, with Lewis sticking up for himself a bit more. So I’m glad it’s happening earlier with this.
“I brought Lewis nearer and nearer to myself in the Morse days. But they’ve killed off his wife so he’s much grumpier than I am now. I hope so anyway!”
Certainly, the actor’s laid-back attitude is very apparent when you talk to him. A contented family man, it’s apparent that although he’s keen to continue the legacy of Morse, after more than 20 years of playing the character, he’s more about enjoying it than putting himself through the wringer. “It’s always been comfortable playing him and that was one of the attractions going back,” he says. “I live alongside Lewis like a pal of mine I see every day.”
Indeed, when he visits his mother, they often happen to catch daytime repeats, which can be something of a shock. “John Thaw’s on the screen and my son walks in from stage left or something!” he exclaims.
Luckily, the positive feedback from the first show means that Kevin has no guilt about returning to the role (he also revisited one of his other iconic characters in the recent Auf Wiedersehen Pet sequels). Original author Colin Dexter is on board and frequently on the set and John Thaw’s widow Sheila Hancock signed off too.
“People enjoy them for what they are,” he says. “It was never meant to be an imitation of Morse or a way of just replacing John with another actor.
“It’s a different animal and with a bit of luck, people enjoy the stories for what they are with our characters and don’t compare them to John Thaw who was incomparable.”
And although it’s hard graft (“I have far more lines to learn than I ever did”), after a couple of gritty one-offs like Dad and Plain Jane, Kevin is relishing the sense of community you get in series television. “I never wanted to get into a series,” he admits. “But having done one, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and having come from rep theatre, I always loved that company feel.
“So I much prefer doing series now when you do a few stories and you’ve got the same crew all the way through. You’re a big gang coming together like a big family and I find it much more relaxing.”
It’s set to continue. Talk is already afoot for another group of films and Kevin says they’re hoping to do four. It all pays the mortgage, but the only regret the actor has in doing it is he gets to miss out on his other passion, cricket. Though he never had much ambition to play professionally himself, he is a gigantic fan and was gutted that shooting through the winter meant he missed England’s tour to Sri Lanka.
“I’ve been out there following it around,” he says, adding that he followed the team to South Africa two years ago. “We always had a few minutes each day going to where the Barmy Army were, standing in among them to sample the atmosphere.”
But surely the legendary – and legendarily inebriated – gang recognised a famous Oxford detective walking in their midst?
“Yeeeaaaahhhh,” he drawls, as if reminded of a slightly unpleasant and/or chaotic memory. “But it’s good fun.”
But there was no need for alarm, as it was all part of filming for the new ITV series of Lewis, the follow-up to Inspector Morse.
Film crews from ITV Productions had been at the house, owned by Worcester College, for the past three days preparing everything for the blast.
The late-night shoot was to be the dramatic conclusion to one of the episodes of the new series.
As part of the episode, crews had to film the door and windows being blown out, with filming going on until around 3am.
Mary Brown, who lives next door, said she was looking forward to seeing it on the finished episode.
Mrs Brown, 87, said: "I think it's all very exciting really and getting to see everything that goes towards making the episode is really interesting.
"I was very fond of Morse, though I haven't really watched much of the Lewis series, but I'll definitely be watching it when it's on."
Mrs Brown said she and her cat planned to go to a friend's house for the evening to get out of the way while filming was going on.
She said: "They said it would be a good idea as it would be a bit noisy and I don't mind as it's not every day you have a film crew next door."
Preparation for the shoot took nearly a month as 900 letters were sent out to Jericho residents to inform them the explosions would be taking place.
Pandora Maxwell, 48, who lives opposite the house, said: "I think it's a bit of fun really and I haven't heard anyone complain about it.
"They have had chaps over there for the past four days working on these special fire boxes behind the windows. I have to confess I have never watched Lewis but I loved Morse - I'll have to look out for it when it's on."
Jenny Beardmore, 31, who lives a few doors down, said the amount of warning given to residents had made sure there was no inconvenience.
Mrs Beardmore said: "We've been given enough time before any of the filming started to raise any concerns and everyone from the film crew has been very helpful."
Simon Baber, the on-site location manager, was quick to thank all the local residents for making the filming run so smoothly.
He said: "We realise there is a certain amount of inconvenience that will be caused by this filming, but residents have been very understanding.
"Some film companies try to keep residents out, but we have to come back and film in these areas again and we try to keep them as happy as we can."
The process involved handing out more than four cases of wine to those residents most affected by filming, as Control Plus granted temporary permission for the suspension of residents' only parking.
The bulk of the filming for the Lewis series is done in London, with eight out of the 24 days of filming allocated to location filming in Oxford.
Mr Baber said: "You can't really mess about with Jericho as it's such a well known area and people will spot it if we're not really filming here. One of the very first Morse murders was filmed here and the area has featured in other episodes of that series, as well as other Lewis episodes, and it's always nice to come back."
WAITING ON WHATELEY - (by Debbie Waite, Oxford Mail, September 21, 2007) -
Kevin Whately is lamenting the loss of one of his favourite parts of Oxford.
"Monica, one of the Randolph's long-standing barmaids has emigrated to Canada," he tells me.
"Each year we go there, some of the staff have changed - although we always get a very warm welcome."
We are sitting in his surprisingly small trailer in the Oxpens Bus and Coach Station car park, in Oxford - the 'base camp' during filming of the second series of the ITV drama, Lewis.
After offering me a cup of tea, courtesy of his assistant, he asks if the Oxford Mail is still "up the road".
"We went there a few years back for an episode," he says.
"The big perk of doing this (Lewis) is being here in Oxford," he tells me.
"We're not flogging ourselves going round and round the M25 trying to get to and from London. It's like a holiday.
"I'm attached to Oxford now," he continues.
"It's like a home from home."
Filming in locations including New College and the Greyhound Stadium at Blackbird Leys, from Monday to Friday, he's staying as usual at The Randolph in St Giles.
"I like the whole city, you just have to point the camera in any direction and that's it," he said.
But the schedule means there's little chance for sightseeing.
"Just a lot of learning these," he says, waving a bunch of scripts.
The first series of Lewis was broadcast in January 2006 and February/March this year.
Chief Inspector Morse's former sidekick, Robbie Lewis (Whately), is now Detective Inspector Lewis and his new sidekick is DS Hathaway (Laurence Fox).
The pilot was seen by 11.4 million viewers, making it the most watched drama of the year across all channels.
But it nearly didn't happen at all - because of Whately's resistance to following up the hugely popular Morse, which ended two years before John Thaw's death from cancer in February 2002.
He said: "Now we're back in a routine, it feels like a kind of factory again, but at that time it was kind of dodgy and I was thinking: 'Is this a terrible mistake?' "But there were a lot of people in the hierarchy who were convinced it would do all right, and convinced me to do it."
Whately was deeply affected by John Thaw's death.
But it is believed he was eventually persuaded after Thaw's widow, Sheila Hancock, gave her blessing.
"I'm enjoying it," he says.
"It's a whole different ball game working with Laurence (Fox), but we're creating something else, something different."
So does he enjoy being the one with the sidekick?
"It's different, because you get a lot of people coming to you for your advice. You're like a kind of uncle really.
"In fact people expect me to have a lot of control over what happens in the programme, but it's not like that at all. I'm not interested in the production side one bit."
Asked for a taste of what's to come in the new series, he smiles.
"Well, one of the films features a gay scene quite heavily, and we had lots of cross dressers and youngsters from the London gay scene down - which made for an interesting 'family' on set!
"And this time we've also been under the Bodleian for a whole day. It's extraordinary. There was some talk about its state after the floods, but it's OK."
There was concern about filming at all after the floods. But the crew came down the week after and the new series of four episodes is scheduled for early 2008.
And how long can we expect to see Lewis on our screens? Whately says: "As long as they keep producing decent scripts we'll carry on."
He's very happy returning to Oxford and The Randolph.
"The people are very nice when they see you in the street.
"By the time you've stopped at almost every table for a chat or a pic, it can take quite some time to get a drink!"
Sidekicks provide both a simple narrative function (they allow the
musings and frustrations of the sleuth to be given an airing, through
discussion of the case) and an emotional one (they represent the
point-of-view of the audience, asking the dumb question, missing the red
herring, drawing us into the story). As the song goes, you can't have
one without the other.
All of which makes the very existence of Lewis, let alone its success,
quite remarkable. Back this week for a new series of four films, of all
the great sidekicks that appeared to be joined at the hip with their
masters, Kevin Whately's Sergeant Lewis seemed the most firmly fused.
Inspector Morse was complex, cynical, Oxford-educated and an
intellectual snob. Lewis was faithful, hard-working and quite possibly
not the brightest light in the bulb shop. When a spin-off was announced
in 2004, four years after the climactic final Inspector Morse film and
two years after the death of John Thaw, Morse-maniacs were aghast: how
could the ultimate sidekick - the man who, in one of the series' most
memorable moments, had kissed, Hardy-like, his dead lord and master-
possibly stand alone?
No-one had more misgivings than Whately himself. "Lewis was invented,
TV-wise anyway, as a sounding board for Morse, a way of getting his
thoughts out in the open. Where Morse was a hugely cerebral character,
Lewis was your everyman, so the audience could look at Morse through
him, and my reactions mirrored how people would feel. So then John's
gone and they asked for two or three years if I would do it [a spin-off]
and I couldn't see the point because, as I say, Lewis wasn't meant to be
an interesting character in his own right. Over the years we'd built up
a back story and obviously people liked him, but whether he would work
in a vacuum I didn't know. They had these ideas of what to do with him
and the first one was to kill off the wife, which is a bit of a
cliché... then we brought in the sidekick."
Clearly reluctant to reprise his most famous role, it's tempting to
conclude that what's kept Whately interested is the presence of a new
sparring partner.
"The thing I enjoy about acting is working with other actors. The thing
that bemuses me is people who do one-man shows because I can't imagine
what fun they get out of it, just standing there and spouting to an
audience. Acting to me is all about interplay, and because of the nature
of Lewis, for the most part you're interviewing people, so it's all
question and answer. The only time you don't have to ask questions is
when you have a bit of interplay between the two regulars."
So when it came to finding a new regular, Whately was instrumental.
"They came up with this idea that they wanted a young version of Morse,
a very English bloke, Oxbridge-educated, a slightly spiritual character
for me to bounce off - and it just happened that I'd caught the last ten
minutes of Colditz [the 2005 version with Damian Lewis and Sophia
Myles]. And there was Laurence Fox at the end. I hadn't seen any of the
story, but I thought, `He's got an interesting face'- I didn't know who
he was. So they brought him in with four or five others and Laurence got
the part [of DS James Hathaway]."
At this very moment in our conversation Fox gambols into the dressing
room where we're preparing for the photoshoot... and something happens.
Fox is everything Whately is not - loomingly tall, dishevelled (he
blames a rip in his jeans held together with duct tape on his father
James's dog), endearingly indiscreet and today in the possession of a
belting cold. But it's immediately clear that their on-screen
relationship works because their off-screen relationship has flourished.
Actors will often tell you about lifelong friendships forged in the
crucible of the camera's glare, when in fact they'd rather eat their own
wardrobe than spend time with their co-star.
With Whately and Fox, it's a regular variety show. They call each other
Lol and Kev, fire off one-liners, mock, rib and josh as if we're back in
the schoolyard. I'm introduced to the full gamut of Kevin Whately acting
skills, all lovingly ripped off by Fox: "`The Full Whately' is a double
eyebrow raise, whereas the half-Whately is just one. I've actually done
a Full Whately myself in some scenes. Then there's what I call the
backhander. He can't hand over a paper or a document without doing it.
He even uses it in other projects."
Whately protests that the backhander is necessary to avoid obscuring
your own face, and responds with the possibility that future episodes
may reveal Hathaway to have a gay lover. Fox replies that Whately has
owned the shirt he's proposing to wear for RT's photos for at least 25
years. The sideshow continues.
Their characters couldn't be more different from their real-life
personas. "Lol is a much bouncier character in real life than he is as
Hathaway. And I say bugger all in real life," says Whately.
Unsurprisingly, Fox was entirely unperturbed at the prospect of taking
on where Morse left off. "He'd never bloody seen Morse!" Whately
complains. "Mind you, I was exactly the same when I met John Thaw - I'd
never seen The Sweeney. But he [Fox] made a point of not watching it."
So now that Fox is the sidekick's sidekick - the man in the background
pulling the odd Full Whately while Whately catches the crooks and claims
the glory- how is he finding it?
"They've evened it up more this year, but it's certainly tough because
at the end of the day you're getting a lot of story in and story is: (a)
the hardest thing to act; and (b) the easiest thing to look stupid while
acting. So I haven't minded not having much to say."
He has, after all, learnt his sidekick acting skills from the best in
the business. "Kev said that all you had to do was watch out for the
moment when they were going to cut to you, which inevitably they do
every scene, and then do something in that moment. So that was good
advice. Actually, I don't mind the term `sidekick' at all. I find it
quite nice.
"We two probably make up 20 per cent of the show as far as story goes.
But it's 80 per cent of the reason why you bother watching it each week
- or at least that's my theory" In the best tradition of detectives and
sidekicks, he's probably onto something there.
Can there be Inspector Morse without Morse? It seems unthinkable, but British actor Kevin Whately took some convincing and says he has never looked back in the spinoff, Lewis.
Whately, 57, is confident dedicated Inspector Morse fans will respond to Lewis.
“Judging by UK audiences, it’s OK. You get the odd mention of Morse every now and then, so he’s still floating around the corridors. We still have the same production values and Oxford background and mad characters, and people are enjoying it.”
The murder-mystery show picks up six years after the grumpy inspector dies after a heart attack in a college quadrangle. Lewis, now an inspector, returns to his stomping ground of the university city of Oxford.
At its height, millions of people in 200 countries watched Inspector Morse. And then the charismatic hero of the title was killed off – an episode watched by 13 million people – and later its star, John Thaw, died of throat cancer.
“I miss him a lot.” Whately says. “Memories of John flood back all the time, every time you go into a college quadrangle. We have a lot of the Morse crew working on Lewis, and we all have fond memories of him. We have a little chuckle when we
While Whately agrees that Inspector Morse was a television institution, he is not trying to resurrect the past or clone what was a successful show.
The producers asked the London-based actor for more than two years to star in Lewis. He declined each time.
“I was a bit hesitant about doing it because without Morse it sounds daft.
My wife said to me, ‘It’s a whole new, different ball game for you starting a show and not being a sidekick.’ It interested me from that point of view.”
But it was the promise of high production values and the approval of Thaw’s widow, Sheila Hancock, that tipped the balance.
“Ted Charles, the producer, contacted me after he went to see her and she gave her blessing to do the show.”
Asked what John Thaw would think of Lewis, Whately says “I think he’d laugh at it and I’m sure he’d ridicule me ridiculously.”
In the end, I said, ‘Well, let’s just do the one (series) and see how the audience responds.’ Thankfully, the audience was great and the press was nice.”
Having played the character for 22 years, he hints of retirement.
“We started in 1986…(Lewis) is nearing retirement age, as I am.”
The follow-up to Morse has a darker twist this time around, with plenty of vicious crimes to test the Geordie detective's meticulous methods.
In this series, havoc reigns in the religious community of Oxford, risking the emotional and physical well-being of DS Hathaway. The worlds of no-rules boxing, Oxford dons and Cold War intrigue also combine with consequences surprisingly close to home, and the talents of an obsessive painter with a photographic memory lie at the heart of a murder in the Bodleian library.
TV favourite Kevin Whately had to put his back into the role of Inspector Lewis in the new series when he found himself having to carry his costar down stairs. In one episode, Lewis must attempt to rescue partner Hathaway (Laurence Fox) froma burning house, which meant Kevin shouldering the load. He says: "It was hot as hell. Half of it was shot in the studio and half of it was shot on location in Jericho (an area of Oxford). Out on location you could feel the heat 100 yards away. But when we were filming in the studio it got hotter and hotter. "
"We were on a very narrow staircase and although Laurence is six foot tall, luckily he is quite light and skinny so it wasn't so bad lifting him. However, for the actual stunt bits with the flames I had to carry an actual stuntman in case his hair caught fire overmy back! He was at least three stone heavier than Laurence."
During the series, Lewis is suffering from insomnia. Kevin jokes: "I think they looked at me and thought, 'God he's got terrible eye bags, hasn't he?' then added the storyline in. There is no single reason why he isn't sleeping but Lewis is a worrier. He still hasn't got over the death of his wife and he brings his work home with him."
The British actor married Piper on December 31 at a village church near their home in West Sussex, with Piper’s Dr Who co-star David Tennant in attendance.
Piper is best known here as Dr Who’s sidekick Rose Tyler but will be seen on Nine this year in the very saucy Secret Diary of a Callgirl.
Fearing this interview will be cut short if I ask Fox if Piper is also still in bed with him, we jump straight into chatting about his latest TV role, as DS James Hathaway in the British crime series, Lewis. But not before I extract from Fox the fact he has never seen Piper in Dr Who.
Lewis is a spin-off from the long-running and successful Inspector Morse series that starred the late John Thaw in the title role.
ITV promoted Robbie Lewis to the lead in a telemovie that became the network’s most watched drama of 2006, attracting more than 11 million viewers. A series followed, which is now screening in Australia, and a second was completed late last year.
There were 33 Inspector Morse episodes but Fox readily admits he had not seen any of them before signing up to play Hathaway alongside Kevin Whately as Lewis.
“I have seen a few now because they show them on Sunday afternoon on cable here,” he says. “If I’ve got nothing to do, I turn them on. They’re nice to watch, I like them.”
DS Hathaway is a Cambridge theology graduate. Tall, bright and up with technology, it takes a while for Lewis to warm to him.
Of his co-star, Fox says, “Kevin’s a diamond; I love him. We get on really well. I respect him and I think he tolerates me.”
Although Inspector Morse’s creator Colin Dexter did not write the Lewis TV series, he was involved in its making and has a Hitchcock-like cameo in each episode.
“Yes, he does, and he gets quite a lot of screen time in his cameos I have noticed,” Fox laughs. “I think he enjoys it. He pretends to be hopeless when he’s actually quite good.”
Fox comes from a family regarded as a British acting dynasty. His father, James, starred in A Passage to India, The Russia House and Patriot Games while his uncle, Edward has a long list of credits including The Day of the Jackal, A Bridge Too Far and Force 10 from Navarone. Cousin Emilia is the star of Silent Witness.
Despite this pedigree, Fox didn’t get the acting bug until he was 21. “I thought about joining the army and I am really pleased I didn’t,” he says.
Since graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Fox has starred in TV productions such as Foyle’s War, in films including Elizabeth: The Golden Age and on.
He says his side of the family was low-key and not very showbiz when he was growing up. Being in a car with Ted Danson, who starred with James Fox in the Emmy-winning 1996 remake of Gulliver’s Travels, is the only significant brush with celebrity Fox can recall.
Fox is unsure what the year ahead holds. But with any luck we’ll get to see him in more of Lewis as well as the Andrew Davies adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View.
Fox has the role of Cecil Vyse, played in the 1985 Merchant Ivory film by the then up-and-coming Daniel Day-Lewis.
Fox likes Davies’ version but says critics weren’t so sure when it screened in the UK last year.
“I got sent a postcard with a picture of Daniel Day-Lewis on it and on the back it said, ‘Good luck’, so I just gave up and did what I thought it should be like,” he says. “So it’s not anything like his.”
