Category: What I’m Watching

What I’m Watching – “Inspector Morse”

I recently got a BritBox subscription, and I’ve been nerding-out. Mainly, I’m rewatching the original Inspector Morse series that aired on Mystery! back in the 80s and 90s. I’ve loved the show since I first saw it back in college. Morse is a genuinely interesting and conflicted character, and John Thaw played him brilliantly.

Morse is smart and righteous, but also very funny. Emphasis on funny. I remember the first episode I ever saw, back when I was in college, when I was channel surfing one late night. My dad happened to be awake at the same time, and we watched an episode titled The Wolvercote Tongue, in which the world-weary Morse tries to solve the mysterious murder of an American tourist. There is one especially good, laugh-out-loud moment, and both my father and I cracked up. It’s one of my fondest memories. Ever since that moment, I was hooked.

I also love the show’s setting of Oxford (the town and the university). I keep hoping to go there someday. I’m sure they’ve got the murder-rate down by now. 

Suddenly, I Want to Move to a Bare Little Island in the North Atlantic

I’m only ten years late to the party, but I’ve just started watching the BBC series Shetland. Based on the mystery novels by Ann Cleeves (which I guess I’ll have to read now), the stories are smart, suspenseful, and engrossing. The acting is also first-rate. But what really makes the show stand out is its setting—the barren, brooding, rugged landscape of the Shetland Islands, which, as I learned from Wikipedia, is the UK’s northernmost territory.

Like a lot of American Southerners who’ve spent their lives in hot places, I’ve always longed to move to a cooler land. As a kid, I loved watching British TV mysteries, partly because the atmosphere looked so soothing in the rainy cities and wind-swept towns where such shows are often filmed. 

Yeah, I know—try telling a Brit that they should be grateful for their weather. But I was envious. Being one of those bookish, introverted people who has too much stimulation going on inside the brain, I always felt like I would be happier in a region where there isn’t so much stimulation outside. Where the sun isn’t so strong, the heat so oppressive. 

Hm. Maybe I should move to Vermont.