Morse set for youthful return, but has crime had its day?

WHEN viewers – all 18 million of them – tuned into watch the final episode of Inspector Morse it seemed clear there was no way back.

The opera-loving detective didn’t get transferred to another force or retire to a more sleepy part of Oxfordshire, he breathed his last and when John Thaw, the actor who had brought him to life died two years later, Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse had already been consigned to television history.

There were the reruns of course and the spin off series Lewis, but fans of the show knew Sunday evenings would never quite be the same again. However, just as Taggart enjoyed a second life after the death of Mark McManus, Inspector Morse now looks set for a comeback.

The new drama, written by Colin Dexter, author of the original novels, will be a prequel to the long-running series and it remains to be seen whether a younger, less melancholic Morse will prove as much as a ratings winner as the curmudgeonly detective who regularly drowned his sorrows in real ale.

“These reincarnations don’t always work,” says Barry Forshaw, an expert in British crime drama and author of the first UK biography of Stieg Larsson. “For many people John Thaw was Morse and bringing in another actor to play his younger self may not appeal to viewers.

“Readers of crime fiction tend to be very loyal and they often have a fixed idea of how a particular detective looks and behaves. When the first of Iain Rankin’s Rebus novels was made for TV, John Hannah played the detective which was terrible casting. He’s a brilliant actor, but in that part he just didn’t connect with the viewers and they were quick to air their disappointment.

“Having said that I never thought Lewis as a character would be able to sustain his own series, but he did.”

It will be down to relative unknown Shaun Evans to keep viewers switched on and with the schedules more packed than ever with crime dramas, that’s not going to be easy. In recent months The Killing, an American reworking of a Danish series, has been hailed as the best crime drama of all time, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are about to have another outing in the stylish adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories and The Shadowline proved as popular as it was impenetrable.

“Crime has always provided a rich resource for film and television and some of the earliest silent films were based on Conan Doyle’s books,” says Barry. “Over the years the most popular detectives like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple can almost end up as caricatures of themselves, but if they are still loved by the public it is possible to reinvent them for a new audience.

“What the new series of Sherlock did so well was to bring Holmes into the modern day and allow the character to have a fresh start. In recent years there has been an appetite for more gritty dramas, that take the audience into a much darker world than Agatha Christie ever created.

“However, I do think there is room for both. Something like Morse or Midsommer Murder is typical Sunday evening fare. They are series which have their tongue firmly in their cheek, whereas something like The Killing is a much more intense watch.”

However, while ITV executives are keeping their fingers crossed that young Morse will be a hit, rumblings in Broadcasting House suggest a backlash against crime dramas could be about to begin.

A couple of months ago Danny Cohen, controller of BBC 1 was discussing his decision to axe Rufus Sewell’s drama Zen. Three episodes of the heavily promoted Italian series had attracted almost six million viewers – roughly the same ratings as the critically acclaimed Wallander – but with Cohen determined to shake up the schedules it was binned along with Larkrise to Candleford.

“I felt that we risked having too many male detectives and arguably we have had maybe too much crime. Detectives and crime is the real staple of quite a lot on the BBC, but also a huge amount of ITV drama.

“I want to broaden the palette a bit and make sure we have enough that is not detective and crime.”

So the whodunit may not be flavour of the month at the BBC, but it would be a little premature to write the obituary for crime drama just yet.

“The best crime writing is absorbing, gripping and leaves you wanting more,” says Barry.” And they’re also the same ingredients for great TV.”

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