Television
Oxford polymath
Simon Hoggart
There was a scene in the latest Inspector Morse, Death Is Now My Neighbour (ITV), in which Morse and Lewis are having a drink. The detective sergeant says some- thing a bit gormless, and Morse replies, almost under his breath, 'Oh, Lewis ...' It was a self-referential joke, since the catch- phrase of the whole series has been — I will try to express this typographically — `0-H-H, Leeee-wiss!'
I was reminded of Maggie Smith's Lady Bracknell in the West End some years ago. For much of the play the audience is wait- ing for just one line, so when she mur- mured 'A handbag?' in an indifferent, throwaway fashion, there was not only laughter but an obvious release of tension.
As I've often said, almost all long-running, successful series become parodies of them- selves. Morse the Show is as much a part of the plot as the improbable events themselves are. People ask why the characters in East- Enders never watch EastEnders; you sense that the people in Morse would tell you that Morse is their favourite programme.
For instance, this week he finally got him- self a woman. As they waited for the flunkies to whisk his red Jag off to the valet parking, the lovely Adele said, 'Are we going to have room service, or go down to dinner?' and Morse replied, 'I think, perhaps, both,' which, unless I'm being quite dirty, is quite a dirty remark to make. Fourteen million viewers must have sighed, 'At last!'
Morse has always existed in two worlds. There's the reality of modern Oxford, Bar- ratt housing estates, Lewis's surly offspring, hooligans from the city which includes the Blackbird Leys estate as well as Magdalen college. Then there are the plonking remarks designed to remind us that we are in the late 1990s. Alcoholic don's wife is recalling a rare romp with her husband that morning: 'Then my radio alarm went off. Jim Naughtie at a time like that!' (Which seemed unfair on Jim. I don't suppose he would use the Today programme to complain about Mag- gie Steed interrupting his love life.) On top of all this heavily signalled reality are plots of a complexity John le Carre might balk at. I almost began to lose it all this week when we saw, crashing fatally down the stairs, the wife of the candidate for Master who had been blackmailed into sleeping with the outgoing Master, whose marriage had been wrecked by her husband who had in turn been consoling himself with the wife of the other candidate. Or something on those lines, The effect is dis- sonant, as if Agatha Christie had been brought in to script an episode of The Bill, or Michael Innes asked to present a docu- drama about life on a new housing devel- opment. If Colin Dexter, the deviser of Morse, had also invented Cluedo, we would all be accusing the pony-tailed reporter, with the Beretta .38, in the kitchen-dinette.
I thought that the superb cast coped bravely with the wilder excesses of their characters. John Shrapnel (much under- used on television, in my view) almost made it possible for us to believe that he really loved his sottish, self-indulgent wife, played by Maggie Steed in a style which almost made us like her. Richard Briers cunningly underplayed the outgoing Mas- ter, a character so absurdly evil that in a Victorian melodrama he would have been laughed offstage.
Why are even modern British thrillers still essentially the same as those over-plot- ted country house mysteries in which almost everyone dies off-camera, while American cop shows are one long round of mayhem and gore? My guess is that most Americans live a by and large crime-free existence, except for a minority in the inner cities. They can enjoy the blood-baths because it is miles away — literally — from the reality they know. Whereas we in Britain have to take account of crime every day, if only to protect ourselves from it. For this reason we like our television crime shows to be stylised, improbable and pleas- antly old fashioned. Even when they're pre- tending to be bang up to date. My point about self-parody was con- firmed, I think, by the return of The Fast Show (BBC 2) which now includes a set of characters who lampoon typical Fast Show viewers. These nerds, male and female, madden their colleagues by endlessly repeating the drippy catchphrases of an imaginary show called I'm An Alien, scrab- bling round people's desks demanding `Where's the pork? Where's the pork?' It seems a fitting commentary on what we're told will be the last series.
Some new sketches worked; others no doubt will as we get used to them, and their catchphrases lodge inside our lobes. For what it's worth, I feel that the dirty men's outfitters, the 'isn't it just brilliant?' man and Ralph and Ted have now outstayed their welcome. But the jazz club with the world's worst trumpeter (`Ah doan blow, man, ah suck') and the nosy check-out girl were, to pluck a phrase at random, brilliant.
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