I'm beginning to dislike this Colin Dexter, or at least the guy who wrote the adaptation, Thomas Ellice. This is I think the fifth episode of this series I've watched and I'm still having serious trouble keeping the characters, their actions and their motives straight. When the story is over and all is casually and briefly explained, I sit there for long minutes in a daze, wondering if I've contracted bovine spongiform disorder or something.
I don't know exactly what the problem is, aside from the holes in my frontal lobes. But for one thing, the characters aren't really well differentiated. They look, sound, and act too much alike. I'm in favor of conformity as much as the next fellow. It promotes stability and acts as a social lubricant because it makes life predictable, but there can be too much of a good thing.
We need Morse and Lewis to have continuity both within and between episodes. But can't we have someone with a marked Welsh accent or some other idiosyncrasy? How about a Pakistani? And do they need such similar names? Nobody would ask for Dickens, but a Doris Buckle here and there wouldn't hurt.
Then too there is the problem with the structure of all five episodes so far. Each begins with a problem being brought to Inspector Morse. In this case it's a wealthy young girl who has been missing for six months. The more that Morse and Lewis poke into the case, the more baffling the evidence becomes. And, so far, it's turned out that the initial problem is only related to the crimes that follow in the most tangential way -- and sometimes not at all.
Usually a half dozen or so suspects emerge, possibly more. And they all know one another. On top of that, the plots become a maze because everybody seems to be playing musical beds. The wind up is that everybody acts suspicious because they all have something to hide. It gets maddening as one lie is exposed after another.
And Morse, with his fulgurating intuition, comes up right off the bat with some solution. In this instance, "The missing girl is dead. I'm certain of it." Well, like hell she's dead! Hercule Poirot would never jump to such a conclusion so early in the game, nor would Sherlock You-Know-Who. To heap error upon error, half-way through, Morse often comes up with still another wrap-up, and it's equally wrong. I don't blame Morse. He's as human as the rest of us and not just a thinking machine like some other fictional detectives. But it occurs to me, just now, that he never admits later that he was wrong. He shows no chagrin. It detracts from the character's admirable humanity that we're given a Morse without remorse.
I'm giving this episode a point more than I usually do for two reasons: (1) I could understand the climactic explanation even if I couldn't understand the details of each of the TWO plots -- one having to do with sex, the other with power. (2) Here is Elizabeth Hurley at twenty-one or twenty-two, playing a boarding-school teen, in all her barely post-adolescent chubbiness, with all her skewed features, and still unmistakably Elizabeth Hurley, sex pot. Actually, she can turn in a good dramatic performance too, as she did in "The Weight of Water." I don't suppose she can help being sexy. Most of us sexy people can't. Others seem to have trouble getting past such Platonic accidents as my noble features, ithyphallic virility, exuberant pheromones, rock-hard abs and buns of steel. If only someone could see through these external advantages to my true inner, spiritual beauty. I imagine Elizabeth Hurley has a similar problem.
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