This week has so far proved a challenging experience commencing with a common cough cold, spending the night being tested at the General Hospital, thought my washing machine had broken down discovering two programmes about the character Morse and one about its actor creator John Thaw, watched on TV the two local Premiers Clubs have brilliant wins, together with a number of films and listening to excerpts of the most the most popular 300 classical work on Classic FM radio formed by amalgamating all the annual public voted lists at Easter for the past sixteen or so years. There were some surprising results and I was able to name a choral work of sublime beauty, heard previously but never identified.
The washing machine problem is the easiest to write about as only a change of fuse in the wall plug was required. Did not panic and was only delay from commencing the weekly wash by a few minutes.
I will only briefly mention a programme recorded on Sunday evening about the life and work of John Thaw, the actor who played the City of Oxford named Detective Morse created by Ted Dexter and which proved to be a great joy, but I will delay writing in depth having ordered an inexpensive biography and also a book written by his second wife about their relationship. John was married to former contemporary drama student at RADA and she admitted they had married too young. He maintained contact with their daughter and this continued when he married his second wife, the actress Sheila Hancock, who had become a widow with a daughter who he adopted. The couple had a daughter themselves and one of the joys of recent times was to experience a programme in which two former wives and their three daughters spoke with such loving affection as well as disarming honesty about someone who continued to have a positive impact on their lives. John was very fortunate to have enjoyed relationships and the company with five remarkable women who will be as much the subject of my writing when additional information becomes available information becomes available.
The only other aspect which I will mention now is that I did not approve of the role which brought him and Denis Waterman International fame as two “act first and talk latter” detectives in the Sweeney (1975 to 1978) although by then he had appeared in five other TV series, made half a dozen films for television, appeared in nine films and nine stage plays including one with Laurence Olivier in 1962. I disliked this form of policing portrayed in the Sweeney in part because had been brought up with viewing the police through the eyes of Jack Warner who filled cinema theatres with his performance as George Dixon of Dock Green in the Blue Lamp and which led to the TV series Dixon of Dock Green in which he ended each episode with “Goodnight All” portraying the ideal community orientated police officer which politicians extol today. The character was very different from Morse who had been an undergraduate at an Oxford College for two years, drove a classic Jaguar car, listened to grand opera day and night, supped pints of real ale and had read widely.
The series came to an end after 13 years because the author of the original novels decided enough was enough and Morse dies. There was a follow up series in which his assistant Lewis was promoted to Inspector and he was joined by a young man who had graduated from Oxford but was also something of a loner. He comes close to a relationship several times but there is always a development which prevented normal progress.
I had mixed feelings about the decision to create a successor series with Lewis but the combination of the seeing the city of Oxford where I lived in five locations in five years and the inclusion of another serious, sensitive and educated man as the Assistant to Lewis meant that by the second series I came to appreciate the work for what it was.
It was only during Monday afternoon that I discovered there was to be a two hour drama to mark the 25 years since the first episode of Morse was aired. It would feature a young Morse arriving to work in Oxford for the first time. There was an excellent article in the Guardian previewing the event although the majority of respondents were horrified at the prospect. I therefore watched more from curiosity than expectation. I was impressed and moved, and the one off ticked all my boxes and wrote to the Guardian expressing the hope that if my reaction was shared ITV would commission a series.
Shaun Evans looks younger than his 32 years and his performance was uncannily a young Morse working as a detective constable in a concrete town who is drafted with colleagues to help the city who were looking for a 15 year old school girl who had gone missing at weekend. He and another colleague are assigned to the city team directly engaged in the search and he is asked to circulate flyers on a door to door search to find out anyone has any sighing of the young woman.
We are introduced to the sights, the atmosphere of academic Oxford and to his love of Opera. We are aware from a scene when he takes lodgings that he had an adult relationship which ended unhappily for him. He also believes from studying the available reports that the missing girl possessed a number of poetry books was of interest and this is reinforced when he visits the household and finds that the books are expensive editions. He also finds crosswords cut from the local paper used as book marks but with only one word completed. This latter aspect is not immediately drawn to the attention of viewers but I noted the clue without appreciating the significance.
Morse concludes from the completed entries that the crossword is being used to arrange assignations in places around Oxford at a time on the Saturday evenings. His theory is ridiculed by the sergeant assistant to the Inspector until the body is found at the destination of the last crossword. His enquiries lead him to speak once more to the close friend of the dead girl at the school, and visit the garage where her boyfriend works without progress being made.
Before the body is found he is asked to investigate the apparent suicide of a student on the banks of the Isis a tributary of the river Thames and this brings him to his former college where he meets up with a former fellow student, now a Don, and on his way to becoming a Professor. He was attempting to visit the young man’s Tutor and on learning that the man is not in college goes to his home where he finds that the wife is a former international Opera soloist whose work continues to mean much to him. When the husband returns he appears shocked at the news, but mentions that the student had been a falling off work over the previous six months. At that point there appeared to be no connection between the missing and now confirmed murdered girl and the student who committed suicide.
We have previously been advised that the girl had been scheduled to go out with a friend from school that refused to answer questions about their relationship and movements and we were alerted that this girl appeared to hang around a garage dealer of Jaguar Cars. The famous Red Jaguar driven by Morse is sitting as a new model on the forecourt and the Detective Inspective also uses a Jaguar which young Morse drives when asked bring in the Inspector one morning because the Detective Sergeant is late in supposedly sick. Thus young Morse acquires his interest in the Jaguar car.
(Morse has also visited the lodgings of the dead student and discovered he shared these with another student from Australia who had also mentioned the change in the behaviour of the deceased over the previous six months).
Once the body of the girl is found the Detective Inspector then takes Morse with him rather than his Sergeant to the mortuary where the pathologist reveals that there had been no sexual interference but the girl had a pregnancy expertly terminated (indicating money and influence) and the Detective Inspector asks Morse to Interview again the friends of the girl at school and also the Local Newspaper who published the crosswords. That there was no sexual interference is a clue because the girl was naked with her clothes around her.
It is necessary to turn a blind eye that young Morse is being asked to undertake inquiries on his own that would have been undertaken by Morse senior, either on his own or with his sergeant present, although in fairness in Lewis the sergeant is given a more independent role than Lewis was given by Morse. Morse at this point is only a Detective constable however.
It is therefore Morse who undertakes the task of visiting the Oxford Mail and asking the editor about the author of the weekly crossword written under the name of OZ. The Editor is played by one of the daughters of John Thaw and comments to the young man that his face is familiar to her. She cannot give the address as the crosswords have been submitted voluntarily and anonymously, arriving by post each week, except for the past week when they were delivered by hand by a young man and unfortunately the person who had seen him was away on holiday. However Morse remembers from one of his visits to see the tutor of the deceased student an artefact with reference to a classical phrase or person, I cannot remember which, under the name of Oz and therefore visits the Tutor again to confront him with the discovery of the relationship between the crosswords and murder. Morse was a noted crossword addict throughout the TV series so this aspect also has resonance.
The tutor admits that he is the author of the crosswords and that he had a relationship with the girl. This came about when he and the former contemporary of Morse at the college were debating the possibility of working class young people being able to enter Oxford if given the right opportunity. The two men had seen the girl at some function and made a bet that the Tutor could not get her into the university Pygmalion/My Fair Lady Style. It was this aspect of the story which struck a chord with me because those of us who attended Ruskin College and Platter Hall as colleges of further education passing an approved Oxford University Diploma were eligible if our examination and tutorial records were good enough to be given up to three interviews at an Oxford College and if approved by a college would be invited to enrol as an undergraduate on a bursary for an honours degree, taken over three years but only required to undertake the second Public examination as the first examination which included a paper in Latin would be bypassed because of the Diploma qualification.
While admitting that he had commenced a relationship with the girl he explained that he had prepared the crossword for positing in the usual way which he had handed to his wife. He had gone to the meeting place arranged for six and waited but the girl had not arrived. It emerged that the girl had a relationship with the deceased student until six months ago when with the relationship with the tutor she had broken the one with the student account for his change in behaviour. It also emerged that the wife had forgotten to post the letter and had given it to the student to take into Oxford for them when he had come to the house for a tutorial. Moreover the crossword which the paper had published was that intended for the following week suggesting it had been removed from the the author had prepared in advance as was his custom. It appeared to be an open and shut case that the student had arranged to meet the girl, murdered her and then taken his own life.
There was another aspect the story which emerged from the interviews with the closest friend of the dead girl. This girl continued to be uncooperative but another girl at the school approaches Morse to say that she was the close friend until the now murdered girl had taken up with a trio of girls who were boy crazy. The unhelpful girl eventually admits that she, the murdered girl and other friends had been invited to a party held at a country house, but the murdered girl had left early to meet someone. The girls at “the parties” are organised by the owner of Jaguar car dealer. The attempt by the Detective Inspector and Morse to get cooperation from the Car dealer is thwarted as he refers to Masonry and influential friends including the head of the detectives. The investigation is further thwarted when they visit the County House where the “party” was held and they are confronted by a government security officer who tells them firmly to lay off this aspect of the case. The story is set at the time of Christine Keeler affair of girls provided at a country house Party at home of Lord Astor at which she met War Minister John Profumo who denied in Parliament having an affair with the girl who also an affair with a senior diplomat at the Russian Embassy and a West Indian Drug trafficker.
The Inspector and Morse get a similar reception when they go to see a well known local criminal who has escaped justice because of influential friends in the past and who appears to be the organiser of the parties. The episode had opened with the party and that an evident influential figure departs immediately for London the girl , subsequently murdered is reported missing.
The outcome of the attempts to block inquiries is that the Inspector makes another visit to the Garage owner, asks Morse to go to the car to collect his tobacco and then when Morse returns the garage owner has been beaten up and is giving two large packets from the contents of the safe. Morse strongly disagrees with the tactics being used. Later Morse is summoned to see the Chief of Detectives; Morse had noticed that the girl in a photo on the desk is that of the close friend and party goer of the murdered girl. The girl cooperates with information on the understanding her father is not told. Now Morse is asked to give evidence against the Inspector but refuses and told to return to his normal duties at his home station. Morse hands in his resignation.
Morse is also upset because his case that the killer was the Tutor has been shot down when a member of the public comes forward to say that he saw a girl wearing the dress shown in photos at bus stop very early in the morning on the road by the woods where her body was found. The time of death had previously put in the evening
On arriving in Oxford Morse was teetotal but under the influence of the Inspector he had commenced to drink beer, now he become intoxicated and goes to visit the former opera singer to say goodbye and to get her to autograph a long play record. He makes a pass which she politely side steps emphasising the love for her husband.
Although leaving he had continued to mull over the case and that the dress found next to the body of the girl appeared smaller than her natural size. He went to phone in his thinking about the dress when it also struck him what had been written on the arm of the dead girl. They had first thought it was the partial number of a vehicle and then a partial address but inquiries had proved negative. Now he realised it was a telephone number although incomplete. He had someone at the party had given the reference to girl.
Back at the office the resignation had been handed back. The Inspector had shown the head of detectives the photo of his daughter naked at the last party. The head of detectives and the Sergeant are also implicated in turning blind eye to the parties, corruption and other criminality through their Masonry association.
The plot thickens as they say. The car dealer is half beaten to death by the older sister of the dead girl. It is revealed that the sister was in fact the girl’s mother who had become pregnant when she a school girl and she had left home and her daughter brought up by the grand parents as their own. The father was the car dealer. He survives the attack but in a vegetable state.
Morse tracks down that the telephone belonged to the London home of an Oxford Member of Parliament and Government Minister but when the Inspector and Morse visit he denies any involvement and throws them out. Later the same security man who had warned them off when they visited the party venue visits the Minister and gives him an ultimatum to resign or commit suicide on instruction from the Prime Minister Harold (Wilson).
Morse had then checked the clothing retailers in the City to try and find out who had bought the undersize dress for the dead girl and his finding shocks and distresses him although why is not immediately revealed. I had guessed the situation already.
The former opera singer is giving a concert for charity at the Oxford Playhouse, attended by her husband sitting in a box and Morse had enquired and been told that tickets had been sold out long before. Now he and the Inspector visit the theatre to arrest the woman for a double murder, that of the girl and that of the student she attempted to frame.
The student and the girl had become lovers but the relationship had ended when she was taken up by the tutors and their experiment bet to do a Pygmalion /My Fair Lady. His wife had realised her husband was then having an affair with the girl. She had first replaced the crossword for the week with the one for the following week which had a different place. The girl had first gone to the party, met the Minister and accepted the telephone number and then gone to meet the tutor. However it was the wife who had turned up and strangled the girl. The following morning she had met the student who was in fact her lover and killed him making it look like suicide. She had stayed at the bus stop near where body of th girl lay the following morning was wearing an identical copy of the dress found by the body of the girl and a wig having removed the original outfit which she later burned along with second dress and the wig. She had stood at the bus stop until she was sure she been seen by a passer by before returning home. She commits suicide in police custody. Morse agrees to withdraw his resignation and take up the offer of a move to the City with the promise of help for accelerated promotion.
While there are moments of questionable credibility the strength of the characterisation of Young Morse is such that I remain impressed and hope there will be a series. In fact this point is made in the Guardian on line during the day and Wikipedia that the commissioning of a series as a no brainer having attracted the second largest number of viewers for the holiday weekend at over six and a half million
I end here to have lunch go and see the film about the life of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
The washing machine problem is the easiest to write about as only a change of fuse in the wall plug was required. Did not panic and was only delay from commencing the weekly wash by a few minutes.
I will only briefly mention a programme recorded on Sunday evening about the life and work of John Thaw, the actor who played the City of Oxford named Detective Morse created by Ted Dexter and which proved to be a great joy, but I will delay writing in depth having ordered an inexpensive biography and also a book written by his second wife about their relationship. John was married to former contemporary drama student at RADA and she admitted they had married too young. He maintained contact with their daughter and this continued when he married his second wife, the actress Sheila Hancock, who had become a widow with a daughter who he adopted. The couple had a daughter themselves and one of the joys of recent times was to experience a programme in which two former wives and their three daughters spoke with such loving affection as well as disarming honesty about someone who continued to have a positive impact on their lives. John was very fortunate to have enjoyed relationships and the company with five remarkable women who will be as much the subject of my writing when additional information becomes available information becomes available.
The only other aspect which I will mention now is that I did not approve of the role which brought him and Denis Waterman International fame as two “act first and talk latter” detectives in the Sweeney (1975 to 1978) although by then he had appeared in five other TV series, made half a dozen films for television, appeared in nine films and nine stage plays including one with Laurence Olivier in 1962. I disliked this form of policing portrayed in the Sweeney in part because had been brought up with viewing the police through the eyes of Jack Warner who filled cinema theatres with his performance as George Dixon of Dock Green in the Blue Lamp and which led to the TV series Dixon of Dock Green in which he ended each episode with “Goodnight All” portraying the ideal community orientated police officer which politicians extol today. The character was very different from Morse who had been an undergraduate at an Oxford College for two years, drove a classic Jaguar car, listened to grand opera day and night, supped pints of real ale and had read widely.
The series came to an end after 13 years because the author of the original novels decided enough was enough and Morse dies. There was a follow up series in which his assistant Lewis was promoted to Inspector and he was joined by a young man who had graduated from Oxford but was also something of a loner. He comes close to a relationship several times but there is always a development which prevented normal progress.
I had mixed feelings about the decision to create a successor series with Lewis but the combination of the seeing the city of Oxford where I lived in five locations in five years and the inclusion of another serious, sensitive and educated man as the Assistant to Lewis meant that by the second series I came to appreciate the work for what it was.
It was only during Monday afternoon that I discovered there was to be a two hour drama to mark the 25 years since the first episode of Morse was aired. It would feature a young Morse arriving to work in Oxford for the first time. There was an excellent article in the Guardian previewing the event although the majority of respondents were horrified at the prospect. I therefore watched more from curiosity than expectation. I was impressed and moved, and the one off ticked all my boxes and wrote to the Guardian expressing the hope that if my reaction was shared ITV would commission a series.
Shaun Evans looks younger than his 32 years and his performance was uncannily a young Morse working as a detective constable in a concrete town who is drafted with colleagues to help the city who were looking for a 15 year old school girl who had gone missing at weekend. He and another colleague are assigned to the city team directly engaged in the search and he is asked to circulate flyers on a door to door search to find out anyone has any sighing of the young woman.
We are introduced to the sights, the atmosphere of academic Oxford and to his love of Opera. We are aware from a scene when he takes lodgings that he had an adult relationship which ended unhappily for him. He also believes from studying the available reports that the missing girl possessed a number of poetry books was of interest and this is reinforced when he visits the household and finds that the books are expensive editions. He also finds crosswords cut from the local paper used as book marks but with only one word completed. This latter aspect is not immediately drawn to the attention of viewers but I noted the clue without appreciating the significance.
Morse concludes from the completed entries that the crossword is being used to arrange assignations in places around Oxford at a time on the Saturday evenings. His theory is ridiculed by the sergeant assistant to the Inspector until the body is found at the destination of the last crossword. His enquiries lead him to speak once more to the close friend of the dead girl at the school, and visit the garage where her boyfriend works without progress being made.
Before the body is found he is asked to investigate the apparent suicide of a student on the banks of the Isis a tributary of the river Thames and this brings him to his former college where he meets up with a former fellow student, now a Don, and on his way to becoming a Professor. He was attempting to visit the young man’s Tutor and on learning that the man is not in college goes to his home where he finds that the wife is a former international Opera soloist whose work continues to mean much to him. When the husband returns he appears shocked at the news, but mentions that the student had been a falling off work over the previous six months. At that point there appeared to be no connection between the missing and now confirmed murdered girl and the student who committed suicide.
We have previously been advised that the girl had been scheduled to go out with a friend from school that refused to answer questions about their relationship and movements and we were alerted that this girl appeared to hang around a garage dealer of Jaguar Cars. The famous Red Jaguar driven by Morse is sitting as a new model on the forecourt and the Detective Inspective also uses a Jaguar which young Morse drives when asked bring in the Inspector one morning because the Detective Sergeant is late in supposedly sick. Thus young Morse acquires his interest in the Jaguar car.
(Morse has also visited the lodgings of the dead student and discovered he shared these with another student from Australia who had also mentioned the change in the behaviour of the deceased over the previous six months).
Once the body of the girl is found the Detective Inspector then takes Morse with him rather than his Sergeant to the mortuary where the pathologist reveals that there had been no sexual interference but the girl had a pregnancy expertly terminated (indicating money and influence) and the Detective Inspector asks Morse to Interview again the friends of the girl at school and also the Local Newspaper who published the crosswords. That there was no sexual interference is a clue because the girl was naked with her clothes around her.
It is necessary to turn a blind eye that young Morse is being asked to undertake inquiries on his own that would have been undertaken by Morse senior, either on his own or with his sergeant present, although in fairness in Lewis the sergeant is given a more independent role than Lewis was given by Morse. Morse at this point is only a Detective constable however.
It is therefore Morse who undertakes the task of visiting the Oxford Mail and asking the editor about the author of the weekly crossword written under the name of OZ. The Editor is played by one of the daughters of John Thaw and comments to the young man that his face is familiar to her. She cannot give the address as the crosswords have been submitted voluntarily and anonymously, arriving by post each week, except for the past week when they were delivered by hand by a young man and unfortunately the person who had seen him was away on holiday. However Morse remembers from one of his visits to see the tutor of the deceased student an artefact with reference to a classical phrase or person, I cannot remember which, under the name of Oz and therefore visits the Tutor again to confront him with the discovery of the relationship between the crosswords and murder. Morse was a noted crossword addict throughout the TV series so this aspect also has resonance.
The tutor admits that he is the author of the crosswords and that he had a relationship with the girl. This came about when he and the former contemporary of Morse at the college were debating the possibility of working class young people being able to enter Oxford if given the right opportunity. The two men had seen the girl at some function and made a bet that the Tutor could not get her into the university Pygmalion/My Fair Lady Style. It was this aspect of the story which struck a chord with me because those of us who attended Ruskin College and Platter Hall as colleges of further education passing an approved Oxford University Diploma were eligible if our examination and tutorial records were good enough to be given up to three interviews at an Oxford College and if approved by a college would be invited to enrol as an undergraduate on a bursary for an honours degree, taken over three years but only required to undertake the second Public examination as the first examination which included a paper in Latin would be bypassed because of the Diploma qualification.
While admitting that he had commenced a relationship with the girl he explained that he had prepared the crossword for positing in the usual way which he had handed to his wife. He had gone to the meeting place arranged for six and waited but the girl had not arrived. It emerged that the girl had a relationship with the deceased student until six months ago when with the relationship with the tutor she had broken the one with the student account for his change in behaviour. It also emerged that the wife had forgotten to post the letter and had given it to the student to take into Oxford for them when he had come to the house for a tutorial. Moreover the crossword which the paper had published was that intended for the following week suggesting it had been removed from the the author had prepared in advance as was his custom. It appeared to be an open and shut case that the student had arranged to meet the girl, murdered her and then taken his own life.
There was another aspect the story which emerged from the interviews with the closest friend of the dead girl. This girl continued to be uncooperative but another girl at the school approaches Morse to say that she was the close friend until the now murdered girl had taken up with a trio of girls who were boy crazy. The unhelpful girl eventually admits that she, the murdered girl and other friends had been invited to a party held at a country house, but the murdered girl had left early to meet someone. The girls at “the parties” are organised by the owner of Jaguar car dealer. The attempt by the Detective Inspector and Morse to get cooperation from the Car dealer is thwarted as he refers to Masonry and influential friends including the head of the detectives. The investigation is further thwarted when they visit the County House where the “party” was held and they are confronted by a government security officer who tells them firmly to lay off this aspect of the case. The story is set at the time of Christine Keeler affair of girls provided at a country house Party at home of Lord Astor at which she met War Minister John Profumo who denied in Parliament having an affair with the girl who also an affair with a senior diplomat at the Russian Embassy and a West Indian Drug trafficker.
The Inspector and Morse get a similar reception when they go to see a well known local criminal who has escaped justice because of influential friends in the past and who appears to be the organiser of the parties. The episode had opened with the party and that an evident influential figure departs immediately for London the girl , subsequently murdered is reported missing.
The outcome of the attempts to block inquiries is that the Inspector makes another visit to the Garage owner, asks Morse to go to the car to collect his tobacco and then when Morse returns the garage owner has been beaten up and is giving two large packets from the contents of the safe. Morse strongly disagrees with the tactics being used. Later Morse is summoned to see the Chief of Detectives; Morse had noticed that the girl in a photo on the desk is that of the close friend and party goer of the murdered girl. The girl cooperates with information on the understanding her father is not told. Now Morse is asked to give evidence against the Inspector but refuses and told to return to his normal duties at his home station. Morse hands in his resignation.
Morse is also upset because his case that the killer was the Tutor has been shot down when a member of the public comes forward to say that he saw a girl wearing the dress shown in photos at bus stop very early in the morning on the road by the woods where her body was found. The time of death had previously put in the evening
On arriving in Oxford Morse was teetotal but under the influence of the Inspector he had commenced to drink beer, now he become intoxicated and goes to visit the former opera singer to say goodbye and to get her to autograph a long play record. He makes a pass which she politely side steps emphasising the love for her husband.
Although leaving he had continued to mull over the case and that the dress found next to the body of the girl appeared smaller than her natural size. He went to phone in his thinking about the dress when it also struck him what had been written on the arm of the dead girl. They had first thought it was the partial number of a vehicle and then a partial address but inquiries had proved negative. Now he realised it was a telephone number although incomplete. He had someone at the party had given the reference to girl.
Back at the office the resignation had been handed back. The Inspector had shown the head of detectives the photo of his daughter naked at the last party. The head of detectives and the Sergeant are also implicated in turning blind eye to the parties, corruption and other criminality through their Masonry association.
The plot thickens as they say. The car dealer is half beaten to death by the older sister of the dead girl. It is revealed that the sister was in fact the girl’s mother who had become pregnant when she a school girl and she had left home and her daughter brought up by the grand parents as their own. The father was the car dealer. He survives the attack but in a vegetable state.
Morse tracks down that the telephone belonged to the London home of an Oxford Member of Parliament and Government Minister but when the Inspector and Morse visit he denies any involvement and throws them out. Later the same security man who had warned them off when they visited the party venue visits the Minister and gives him an ultimatum to resign or commit suicide on instruction from the Prime Minister Harold (Wilson).
Morse had then checked the clothing retailers in the City to try and find out who had bought the undersize dress for the dead girl and his finding shocks and distresses him although why is not immediately revealed. I had guessed the situation already.
The former opera singer is giving a concert for charity at the Oxford Playhouse, attended by her husband sitting in a box and Morse had enquired and been told that tickets had been sold out long before. Now he and the Inspector visit the theatre to arrest the woman for a double murder, that of the girl and that of the student she attempted to frame.
The student and the girl had become lovers but the relationship had ended when she was taken up by the tutors and their experiment bet to do a Pygmalion /My Fair Lady. His wife had realised her husband was then having an affair with the girl. She had first replaced the crossword for the week with the one for the following week which had a different place. The girl had first gone to the party, met the Minister and accepted the telephone number and then gone to meet the tutor. However it was the wife who had turned up and strangled the girl. The following morning she had met the student who was in fact her lover and killed him making it look like suicide. She had stayed at the bus stop near where body of th girl lay the following morning was wearing an identical copy of the dress found by the body of the girl and a wig having removed the original outfit which she later burned along with second dress and the wig. She had stood at the bus stop until she was sure she been seen by a passer by before returning home. She commits suicide in police custody. Morse agrees to withdraw his resignation and take up the offer of a move to the City with the promise of help for accelerated promotion.
While there are moments of questionable credibility the strength of the characterisation of Young Morse is such that I remain impressed and hope there will be a series. In fact this point is made in the Guardian on line during the day and Wikipedia that the commissioning of a series as a no brainer having attracted the second largest number of viewers for the holiday weekend at over six and a half million
I end here to have lunch go and see the film about the life of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
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