Shot on film in Oxford, the individual stories were broadcast in two-hour prime-time slots on British networked commercial television, contributing significantly to the reputation for quality garnered for independent television by series such as Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown (both made by Granada). This reputation was enhanced by the increasing willingness of theatrical actors such as Janet Suzman, Sheila Gish, and Sir John Gielgud to guest in the series. However, the series also staked its claim to be "quality television" through continual high-cultural references, particularly the use of literary clues, musical settings, and Barrington Pheloung's theme music. Thus, the very first Morse, "The Dead of Jericho" (January 6, 1987), investigates the murder of a woman with whom Morse (no forename given until the 1997 special Death Is Now My Neighbour) has become romantically involved through their shared membership of an amateur choir. The opening titles intercut shots of Oxford colleges to a soundtrack of the choir singing, while Morse plays a competing baroque work loudly on his car stereo. Morse spends some large part of the film trying to convince the skeptical Lewis that  "Sophocles did it," after finding that the murdered woman has a copy of Oedipus Rex at her bedside and her putative son has damaged his eyes. Morse is, characteristically, wrong-but right in the end.

     Almost symmetrically, but with the rather more splendid setting of an Oxford ceremony for the conferring of honorary degrees testifying to the success of the series, the final episode in the series, "Twilight of the Gods," not only uses a Wagnerian title but also weaves the opera through the investigation of an ap­ parent assassination attempt on a Welsh diva. The significance of music in the series for both mise-en-scene and character (it is repeatedly shown to be Morse's most reliable pleasure, apart from good beer) can be seen at its most potent in the regular use of orchestral and choral works as the soundtrack to a very characteristic Morse shot, the narratively redundant crane or pan over Oxford college buildings. This juxtaposition, like Morse's old and loved Jaguar, insists that although the program may be about murder, it is murder of the highest quality. The plots, which frequently involve the very wealthy-and their lovely houses-tend to be driven by personal, rather than social factors. Morse's Oxford is full of familial and professional jealousies and passions rather than urban deprivation, unemployment, or criminal subcultures.

     Inspector Morse, despite the skillful and repeated insertion of contemporary references, somehow seems to be set in the past, and is therefore cognate with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple stories-in a genre we might call "retro-expo" crime-rather than with Between the Lines or The Bill. Within these relatively reliable and familiar parameters of a certain kind of Englishness, it is the casting of John Thaw as Morse that most significantly shapes the series. This has two main aspects, apart from the continuing pleasures of Thaw's grumpy, economical, and-in contrast to some of his guest co-stars-profoundly televisual performance. First, Thaw, despite a long television history, is best known in Britain as the foul-mouthed, insubordinate, unorthodox Inspector Regan of The Sweeney, a police show first broadcast in the 1970s and regarded as excessively violent and particularly significant in erod­ ing the representational divide between law enforcers and law breakers (an erosion in which, for example, Don Siegel's film with Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry, was seen as particularly significant). That it should be Thaw who once again appears as "a good detective, but a bad policeman," but this time in a series that eschews instinct and action for intuition and deduction, offers a rich contrast for viewers familiar with The Sweeney. However, it is the partnership between Thaw and Kevin Whately (originally a member of the radical 7.84 theater group, and subsequently a lead in his own right as Dr. Jack Kerruish of Peak Practice) that drives the continuity of the series and offers pleasures to viewers who may not be at ease with Morse's high-cultural world. For if Morse, the former Oxford student and doer of crosswords, is the brilliant loner who is vulnerable to the charms of women of a certain age, it is Lewis, happily married with children, who, like Dr. Watson, does much of the legwork and deduction, while also nurturing his brilliant chief. However, it is also Lewis, a happy man who often fails to understand the cultural references ("So do we have an address for this Sophocles?"), who, in the most literal sense, brings Morse down to earth-to popular television.