It's a nice leisurely murder mystery. The plot meanders around so much and there are enough red herrings that I had a hard time following it. It's not Agatha Christie, with everything and everyone laid out for examination in some linear fashion. Morse wanders around a good deal, always looking slightly pained. The editing introduces us to people we've never seen before, often rushing around and doing something that is important to them, though we don't know why.
I'll give an example of what I mean. A young man, a student, is seen briefly, acting suspicious, and Morse is interested in him. The boy bonks Morse on the head and dashes away. Then we see him hurrying into an apartment building with a circular staircase. The hallway has a slogan spritzed on it: "Gay Lib". And there is a red icon painted next to it indicating maleness or Mars. The boy stops at the bottom of the staircase. Another young man, whom we've never seen before and will never see again, appears two or three flights upward. There is a sharp exchange between the two. The student wants something unspecified from the other. The other man is irritated because it's late but he finally gives in to the student's importuning. End of scene. What the hell is going on? We discover that the student is gay and is also a junkie, but we discover it later -- too much later.
False leads abound -- or are they in fact false? I thought Morse has it figured out when he identified Oedipus as the murderer but that turns out to be balderdash. I think. Suddenly, at the very end, Morse gets down to business and an offhand remark by Lewis identifies the real murderer but it all happens so quickly I was left dazed. Maybe I'd had one glass of wine too many or age is turning my brain to tofu, but I really needed one of those summaries that Hercule Poirot always comes up with, the kind that neatly unravels the mystery, discards the red herrings, and explains how and why the crime, she was committed.
This was the first time I'd seen an episode since the series ran on TV almost twenty years ago and I've always enjoyed them but don't remember ever being quite so baffled. Morse's character is likable, what with his beer, his nifty Jaguar, his dreaminess, and his occasional irritability. In this episode, towards the end, he seats himself at the piano of one of the victims and plunks out the so-called Tristan chord from Wagner. The score under the end credits is cute. The strings spell out the protagonist's name in Morse code in 3/4 time. "Morse code," "Inspector Morse" -- get it? Here it is: M =dah dah, O = dah dah dah, R = dit dah dit, S = dit dit dit, E = dit. M-O-R-S-E. You may have to listen to the high-pitched violins carefully but it's there. The gag is seamlessly integrated into the more dramatic theme too.
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