It's not just Hollywood - British TV is at it again:
Inspector Morse is an enigma – let's keep him that way
ITV is to dig back into the detective’s youth. Is nothing sacred?
By Iain Hollingshead
7:30AM BST 05 Aug 2011
While it is often said that there are only seven basic plots in fiction, you could be forgiven for thinking that there aren’t that many more characters, either. The publishing, film and television industries, none of them shy of money-spinning sequels or prequels, have recently introduced us to a young James Bond, a young Sherlock Holmes, a young Batman and even a youthful Del Trotter. Yesterday it was announced that ITV is making a prequel to Inspector Morse.
Set in 1965 it portrays Morse as a junior detective who’s just flunked out of Oxford University and is investigating the disappearance of a schoolgirl. If the one-off drama goes down well when it’s screened next year, ITV plans to turn it into a series.
For fans of the lugubrious detective, who died of a heart attack in 2000 after 33 episodes, the news comes as such a shock that one longs for a calming pint of warm ale, a distracting cryptic crossword and a blast of Wagner. Young Morse? Is nothing sacred? Next they’ll be commissioning a comedy to show how Basil Fawlty met Sybil on a catering course at Oxford Brookes. 8)
But, like a patient given bad news by the doctor, let’s start by trying to look on the bright side. ITV’s concept might be a cynical one, attempting to cash in on a show that was sold to 200 countries and watched by a staggering one billion people, but the idea did, at least, come from Colin Dexter, Morse’s creator.
“It is my fault, really,” he says. “I was asked to write a short story about Morse a year or so ago. I am not particularly smitten with resurrections, so instead of raising him from the dead I decided to go back in time.”
The new script has been written by Russell Lewis, who also created Lewis, another Morse spin-off based on the inspector’s sidekick. Interestingly, when Dexter gave Lewis his blessing in 2006, one of his conditions was that no one except John Thaw, who died in 2002, could play Morse. “John was Morse and that’s it,” he said. “He’s not James Bond.”
Five years later and young Morse will be played by Shaun Evans, a relatively unknown 31-year-old. And while Morse fans will no doubt wish him well, one wonders how many will bother tuning in.
For although the Morse series had many attractions, not least the relationship between the two main characters, the deft plots and the beautiful scenery, its chief joy was the enigmatic character of Morse himself. “Two hours with a miserable sod who likes beer and can’t relate to women?” said Thaw to the executive producer when he was offered the part. “If it’s a flop, I will blame you.”
But it was those very idiosyncrasies that made Morse so attractive, not least to women, who wanted either to mother or to marry him, or both. Men, too, warmed to the Jaguar-driving, crossword-solving eternal bachelor, by turns curmudgeonly and kind-hearted, bullying and pedantic.
Such qualities are more easily forgiven in an older man. Nor do we particularly want a detailed account of how he got to this stage. In the original series, references to his past were kept opaque, the better to excite the viewer’s imagination.
It was hinted that he’d won a scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford, but was sent down after poor exam results caused by a failed love affair. Beyond that we knew little. Morse even used to joke that his first name was Inspector: Thaw was not told that it was Endeavour until 1995, making him only the third person in the know, after Dexter and his wife. This new spin-off is called Endeavour.
Perhaps none of this will matter if the script is as good as Dexter says it is. Then again, one wonders whether they’ll get the all-important details right to keep the fans happy. “A junior detective running a Jag?” wrote one incredulous reader under our online story yesterday, which included a publicity shot of Evans leaning over the bonnet of a nifty black motor. “A Mini perhaps. Unless he’s taking a few bungs.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan ... t-way.html
