Dear Diary: Inspector Morse
I’m on a Morse jag. I’ve got all the Inspector Morse episodes, and I know at least half of them by heart. For that reason, I don’t watch them very often. But, once a year, I succumb to the charms of John Thaw and Kevin Whately and the galaxy of Names that people the thirty-three episodes. What happens is your basic faute de mieux: there isn’t a feature film that appeals (or there is one, but I’ve watched it five times in four days), so I go through the Hickson Marples. When they’re done, I turn to Morse. When I’m through with Morse, it’s Jane Tennyson’s turn. The only rule is that I have to watch all of each before moving on.
This year, I’m doing Morse blind. I insert each DVD into the kitchen screen after taking scrupulous care not to know which episode it is. This is better, let me tell you, than watching the shows in alphabetical order — how wet was that? Next time, I hope, I’ll know enough to watch them in the order in which they were aired. The episode in the machine right now is the one about the competition for the mastership of some college or other, and the woman who is shot in her own townhome — by mistake, as I recall. Although “as I recall” is never very comprehensive. For which thank heaven! The killer is a hoity-toity lady who bosses her husband around. She is not apprehended outside the Bath hotel where Morse confronts her, but soon after. As I recall.
I watch these shows in the kitchen, which is to say that I don’t watch them at all — I’m cooking, washing dishes, exploring the refrigerator. With my rigid spine, I don’t have the option of turning a casual glance in the screen’s direction; I have to stop and reposition myself to see what is going on. That’s not necessary most of the time, and when it is necessary, failing to do so simply makes the episode all the more richly interesting, because my little brain secretes implications and complications to make sense of what I haven’t seen. This kind of misinformation can take years to uproot. I can never remember what happened to the Wolvercote Tongue.
What I love most about these shows — Morse, Marple and Tennyson — is that they are presented in English, a language that is all but unknown in my country.