Enough Sap for a Pancake Buffet

Absalom1991

I won't go on too long with my comments. Well, too long, perhaps, anyway. I already noted my big concerns about this series already. I'm going through the "Morse" and "Lewis" series in sequence, and here I am - mixing past and present tenses. I know it's all old news and that I'm writing this in an obscure corner of IMDb.

Several of the reviewers here have it right. "Lewis" is weak compared to "Morse" in numerous ways. Times change, producers change, visions change.

However, why do the changes of time, production and vision inevitably seem to move in the direction of laziness, cheap thrills, superficial glitter and decay of respect for characters as representatives of real humanity and human issues as they are actually lived?

This episode was silly. The writing was cynically formulaic, although one wonders if the writer has the kidney to be consciously cynical.

Apparently the intended audience became that impatient bunch who can't be bothered with anything requiring thought, but require the equivalent of an adolescent's screen saver (not that in 2015 any adolescent knows what that is). The images run, inexorably:

Honeyed Stone of Oxford

Unicorn

Lovely Young Face

Arrogant Old Oxfordian

Posh Gathering

Honeyed Stone of Oxford

Horrific Murder

Arrogant Old Oxfordian

Lovely Young Face

A Chase/A Rush/A Threat/A CLIMAX

Honeyed Stone of Oxford

All interspersed with shots of Old Increasingly Wise Lewis/Younger Tortured Hathaway.

"Inspector Lewis" is entropic television. It is an colorful, oily puddle made successful because of its positioning to reflect something better - and real.

The worst of it is that the actors and their characters are wasted and caught in the drift. The regulars are marvelous performers.

score 2/10

Absalom1991 27 June 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3265984/