Lewis: Intelligent Design - the end of an era?

Lewis came to a gently poignant end this week after seven series, with a good two-part episode called Intelligent Design. The episode title had a suitable double meaning, since it seems to me that Lewis certainly has been a cleverly designed series. I admit I wasn't attracted to the premise initially. Much as I'd enjoyed Inspector Morse, I didn't think a series of sequels featuring his sidekick would work. But I was wrong.

There was a combination of reasons why they became a success. Kevin Whately is a reliable actor, and what Lewis lacks in flair he makes up for in humanity. His slow-burning relationship with Hobson the pathologist played very well, partly because Claire Holman's portrayal of Hobson was so reserved yet appealing The scripts were generally good, and of course the setting is superb,and the photography made the most of it.

But what I liked about the series above all was a character Colin Dexter didn't create, the new sidekick, Hathaway, played by Laurence Fox. The dynamic between Hathaway and Lewis was, in its way, as engaging as that between Morse and Lewis. And a word, too, for Rebecca Front as Chief Superintendent Innocent. She too was very likeable, and made the most of a fairly limited role.

Intelligent Design was a typically convoluted story, about a professor whose release from prison sparks a disastrous chain of events. There was a cameo performance from another Fox, Edward, and though I didn't believe in the scam at the heart of the story for a minute, that didn't really matter. It was good watching, and overall I'd rate Lewis as one of the very best traditional detective series of the last ten years. I'll miss it. But wait - we're promised Endeavour next. The Dexter franchise keeps on running!

Lewis - Falling Darkness: review

The latest series of Lewis came to an end with Falling Darkness, an episode written by a highly experienced screen writer, Russell Lewis. It was set at Hallowe’en, and focused on Laura Hobson (Clare Holman), the attractive pathologist whose slowly developing relationship with Lewis (Kevin Whately) has been one of the recurrent themes of the series.

The concept of encountering friends, and ghosts, from the past, is at the heart of the story. Laura is about to meet up with two friends and one-time housemates from student days when she is called to a crime scene. When she arrives, she finds that the victim is one of those friends, whose name is Ligeia. Soon another murder occurs – and the scene this time is the same student house where Laura and her friends lived twenty years ago. The second victim is a girl called Rowena.

Now, if you know your Edgar Allan Poe, you will be ahead of me here. Ligeia and Rowena are characters in one of Poe’s doom-laden stories. Reasoning this couldn’t be a coincidence, I decided there must be a Poe theme to the plot, and this neatly led me down entirely the wrong track in my attempts to figure out what on earth was going on. The red herrings that piled up included the warnings of a mysterious spiritualist, which turned out to have nothing to do with the explanation for the crimes, as far as I could tell. Shamefully, for a crime writer, I finished the episode still unclear about the motive for poor Rowena’s murder.

Throw in a mysterious disease which this time was relevant to the story (I’d never heard of it before, but according to a quick internet search, actually it affects only a small number of families worldwide) and you might think I found this was an unsatisfactory episode. It wouldn’t have worked as a novel, yet somehow – thanks mainly to a string of terrific performances by a high calibre cast – it made good Sunday evening TV viewing. I’ve enjoyed this series, and I’ll miss it. But I’m sure Lewis will be back, and I hope Laura will be, too.

Lewis: Your Sudden Death Question - review

Your Sudden Death Question, this week’s episode of Lewis, was written by Alan Plater, which is usually a guarantee of high quality writing, and Plater did not let us down, with an entertaining story combining two of my favourite things, a quiz and an elaborate murder mystery.

The idea was that Marcus, played by Alan Davies (yes, Jonathan Creek himself) had organised a bank holiday quiz show, taking place in an Oxford college, in which pairs of contestants played for a £5000 prize. One of those involved, Ethan Croft (Adam James) was a know-all who clearly knew something to the discredit of at least one of his rivals. Needless to say, he soon winds up dead in the college fountain. Soon one of the women to whom he’d taken a shine is murdered as well.

Lewis and Hathaway investigate with their customary determination and unravel a host of connections between the quiz players. This was a very good example of the classic ‘closed circle’ of suspects, in the Agatha Christie style, in a story which updates the whodunit traditions, while remaining pretty true to them in all essentials. You either love this sort of thing, or loathe it, and I must say I love it. I especially liked the grumpy old men played by Timothy West and Nicholas Farrell.

I enjoyed the episode all the more because I didn’t figure out the solution, and because there were so many nice touches in the dialogue. I also liked the development of the relationship between Lewis (Kevin Whately) and the pathologist (Claire Holman.) Hathaway (Laurence Fox), who managed to have his guitar nicked when he attended a music festival, was as agreeably quirky as ever. Great stuff.

Lewis: The Dead of Winter - review

The Dead of Winter kicked off the new series of Lewis on Sunday evening, and it was a very good episode, written (appropriately enough) by Russell Lewis, a highly experienced script writer. He was once mooted as a potential writer for a series based on my Harry Devlin novels; it’s my loss that this never came to pass.

The Dead of Winter was in the same mould as some of the best episodes of Inspector Morse, making the most of the Oxford setting, and a grand country house. Quintessential Englishness, if you like. The story was satisfyingly convoluted, too. With Lewis, as with so many good detective stories, sometimes the plot is rather unlikely when you stop to think it all through. But no matter – the key issue is the conviction with which the tale is told. And this one was told extremely well.

An academic is found murdered on an Oxford tour bus, but it soon becomes apparent that the deed was done elsewhere – in a church on the estate of a grand house where Lewis’s sidekick Hathaway grew up. Hathaway is a central figure in the story, and Laurence Fox’s performance was, I thought, compelling.

The rest of the cast was, as usual, excellent. Richard Johnson was splendid as a louche elderly aristocrat, while Nathaniel Parker was good as the lover of Johnson’s glamorous wife, played by Juliet Aubrey. Camilla Arfwedson, whom I haven’t come across elsewhere, was suitably seductive as love interest for Hathaway. And Clare Holman continues to make the most of a limited role as a pathologist who sometimes acts as Kevin Whately’s confidante.

All in all, first class light entertainment. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.