TV detectives - new series

The new year has seen a flurry of new detective series, including the return of a number of old favourites. These include Endeavour, which is written by the excellent Russell Lewis. At the end of the last series, I did wonder how the cliffhanger situation would be resolved. The short answer is that it wasn't addressed very fully at all: Morse spent a bit of time in prison before being freed once the truth was revealed, and then found himself lured back into police work. Not totally satisfactory, but I must say that in other respects the first two stories in the new series have been well-plotted. The error was that end-of-series cliffhanger, which was simply over the top.

Endeavour is a two-hour show in the finest Inspector Morse tradition. Shetland, which returned on Friday, is split into a sequence of two-part one-hour episodes. The new story was, I felt, the strongest so far of those not based on the original novels by Ann Cleeves. A great location can do wonders for a TV show,but it's not everything - above all, you need a good story, and this tale of a young man who meets a grisly fate after travelling to Shetland by sea got the series off to an excellent start.

I'd not seen the first series of The Young Montalbano, but I caught the first episode of the new series. The setting in Sicily is again very attractive, and a lot sunnier than Shetland, while the story was pleasingly convoluted. However, I felt that the tone of the episode was rather uneven, a mix of jokey and serious that jarred a little. There's not much doubt about the tone of Death in Paradise, which has returned with more stories which combine Golden Age style plot devices with an exotic tropical setting. It's very light, undemanding entertainment.

I've stayed with Dickensian, which is a sort of soap opera bringing together lots of characters from Dickens, and held together by an ongoing murder investigation (that of Jacob Marley) conducted by Inspector Bucket. The cast is superb, but the story (20 episodes of 30 minutes each) is starting to drag, while the jaunty background music is an example of too much of a good thing. With this one, I think less would have been more. But what a fine actor Anton Lesser is. He plays Endeavour Morse's prissy boss and, in Dickensian, Fagin, with equal conviction.

And then, away from cop dramas, there's War and Peace. I've never read Leo Tolstoy, and I don't watch many historical dramas, but I do admire Andrew Davies' storytelling skills, and I must say that I am really enjoying this series. Some people tell me that it's dumbed-down, but if that's true, it's dumbed-down very well indeed.

Endeavour, Broadchurch, and does murder go on forever?

Endeavour continued this evening with another episode from the reliable Russell Lewis. A special feature of Fugue was the inclusion in the cast of Abigail Thaw in a small part as a journalist, a nice touch, given the many memorable performances of her father John in Inspector Morse Another enjoyable Oxford whodunit, the plot a serial killer story with a bundle of classic, and indeed classical music, ingredients. I gather that the first episode had very good ratings, and they were well deserved.

Then, tomorrow evening, comes the final episode of Broadchurch. I'm away, so it may be a few days before I catch up with whodunit. However, just before I set off, I'm scheduled to do an interview on Radio Cumbria's breakfast show, to discuss not only Broadchurch but also, more generally, the eternal appeal of the whodunit.

I touched on this very subject on this blog last week, and for all the changes in society and styles of writing, I see no end in sight for the whodunit. Millions of people still enjoy the form, and I'm tempted to say that it's as popular as it's ever been. This would not have surprised Agatha Christie, even though, as a modest woman, it's clear that she didn't expect her own books to last (why else would she, in some of them, have given away the solutions to earlier puzzles?)

I have in my collection a book that Christie signed for a friend of hers at the height of the Second World War. It must have been a very frightening time. Yet, as she said in her inscription, "Wars may come and wars may go, but murder goes on for ever!" It's true in real life, sadly, but much more happily, I think it's also true of fiction. The whodunit mystery has real staying power, and the number of TV whodunits I've reviewed since New Year's Day rather bears that out.

By the way, I'm still not quite sure about Arne Dahl. I watched the new story, Bad Blood, last night, but I rather feel the writers are struggling for effect, unlike Russell Lewis.

Finally, my trip has a detective fiction connection, of which more in a few days. Meanwhile, a review of Peter Lovesey's new book will appear while I'm away from home.

Endeavour: Girl - ITV review

If Broadchurch has, as I said in my last post, underlined the continuing appeal of the whodunit, then Endeavour does not only that but also highlights the seemingly endless potential of Inspector Morse spin-offs. I enjoyed the pilot episode when it was screened, and the first episode of the first full series, Girl, was a high quality murder mystery.

A great deal of credit has to go to Russell Lewis, the writer, who has taken the essence of the original series,and the character as played by John Thaw, and given us a very appealing prequel set in the sixties. The plot of Girl was clever and the revelation of the culprit's identity took me completely by surprise. Pleasurable surprise, I must add. As I said yesterday, it is good to be fooled fairly, and I thought Russell Lewis paced the plot twists perfectly. There was even a neat little code which provided a crucial clue to that person's name. Colin Dexter would have been well pleased, I think.

The acting, too, is very good. Shaun Evans catches the young Morse's bolshie but vulnerable personality, and Roger Allam, as DI Thursday, is humane and believable. Some comic relief is offered by Anton Lesser's prissy disdain for the young cop. Sophie Stuckey, playng a suspect with epilepsy whom Morse fancies, handled the tricky role of the girl of the title very well.

Setting counts for a great deal in so many TV crime shows,and of course the Morse franchise has the inestimable advantage of being set in one of the most photogenic of cities. I wonder sometimes if people who are less keen on Oxford than I am may get bored with the endless flow of cop shows set there, but all the signs are that demand for those shows is as strong as ever. Yes, the broadcasters are playing it safe, and that's why a less conventional series like Broadchurch is so welcome. But if subsequent screenplays are as sharp as this one was, there is a good chance that Endeavour will run and run.

Endeavour: review

Endeavour, shown this evening on ITV, is a relative rarity in detective fiction, a prequel. You can guess from the title that it concerned the early days of Colin Dexter's much-loved Inspector Morse. We have, of course, seen attempts at the early life of Sherlock Holmes, although as yet we've been spared stories about the youthful exploits of Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple (though, who knows, perhsaps some TV mogul somewhere is even now thinking about suitably inappropriate casting ideas.)

The first question I asked myself before watching was: do we really need a prequel? It is clearly a money-spinner, but does it really add anything to our appreciation of the character? After all, there are plenty of excellent books (and also some written by me!) that it would be good to see on TV, yet which are unlikely to make the small screen any time soon. You can argue that it's a pity that TV companies prefer the safe, the tried and tested, to taking a risk with something unfamiliar. And, joking and personal bias apart, I do think this is a pity. But it's also commercial reality. TV is a business, and the Morse franchise has been hugely successful. Artistically succesful, too. What's more, although I was initially resistant to the concept of Lewis, I've found it so entertaining that I've become a real fan. So I was more than ready to set aside instinctive prejudice against the concept.

My conclusion is that the experiment was definitely worthwhile. Russell Lewis, the scriptwriter, did an extremely good job (again I find myself doing a bit of teeth-gnashing, since although I've never met him, Russell Lewis was once mooted as a prospective scriptwriter for a TV version of the Harry Devlin stories, which more than once were the subject of an options deal that never turned into something that was filmed.) In particular, I liked the nods to the original stories - not just the cameo appearance of Colin Dexter, or the casting of Abigail Thaw, daugher of the irreplaceable John, but various neat bits of scripting. Oxford, of course, remains one of the most photogenic of settings for a classic mystery.

Shaun Evans did a decent job of the very difficult task of playing young Morse. I also very much liked Roger Allam's performance as his boss, Inspector Thursday. As for the whodunit plot, it followed a formula familiar to Morse fans. I shall say no more! But it was entertaining from start to finish.

The big question now is whether Endeavour will prove to be a pilot for a series. I have mixed feelings, for the reasons I've mentioned. But I did enjoy this show, and I certainly wouldn't bet against our seeing more stories about Morse's early career before too long.

One final thought. I remember clearly watching the very first episode of Inspector Morse. Apparently it was back in 1987, four years before I had a mystery of my own published. Talk about time flying...