Morse and Colin Dexter

My partner was a big fan of Morse and when we married, he got me watching the TV show and he loved all the books.  I never really got to like Morse as a character but I enjoyed the show.  My sympathies were with the unfortunate and hardworking Lewis, who carried the can for all of his boss’s bad temper.  My husband liked crosswords and beer, so he shared some of Dexter’s and Morse’s enthusiasms.

The middle aged, lonely agnostic minded Inspector was the brainchild of Colin Dexter.  Dexter was born in 1930 to a middle class family and went to a public school and then to Cambridge.  He went into teaching, and became a classics master…  His brother John was also a classics master at a school, but Colin found himself going gradually deaf in the 1960s.  This meant he had to give up teaching and he got a job in examination administration.   He worked at the University of Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations (UODLE) for many years, till he retired in 1988.

During the early 1970s, out of boredom on a family holiday, he began to write a mystery story and created Morse and his sidekick Robbie Lewis.  In the early books, Lewis is Welsh and close to retirement age.  However when TV took up the books in the later 1980s, Dexter made Lewis younger and closer to the TV character portrayed by Kevin Whately, a Geordie family man.

Lewis is a deliberate contrast to Morse, who is a grumpy bad tempered bachelor who never has any great success with women and has no family.  Lewis is kindly, good tempered and a loving father and husband.  He puts up with his Inspector’s snarling and expecting him to drive and to pay for his beer, and the constant put downs that he makes, because he thinks of Lewis as being less intelligent.  So Morse is a very flawed hero, who is a borderline alcoholic, with some of his creator’s hobbies of loving Wagner, crosswords, and real ale. John Thaw brought Morse to life, and made his grumpiness more lovable… and the beauty of the Oxford setting and well-acted well plotted episodes made the show extremely popular.   Dexter like Hitchcock, had a brief appearance in every episode, usually a silent part.

Some years into the series, Dexter killed off Morse, in both the TV and book versions.  The actor John Thaw died and Later on Keven Whatley played Lewis, in a post Morse world.   He is back at Oxford, after a stint in the Virgin Islands.  He has become a DI and lost his beloved wife, and now works with a young Sergeant James Hathaway.  

Dexter continued to write Morse novels, and occasionally appeared in episodes of Lewis.  In recent years, he became a consultant on “Endeavour” a series set in Morse’s earlier career.  He always said that he didn’t want anyone but John Thaw to play the mature Morse.

Dexter died at the age of 86.. after a long and successful career as a writer and a long and happy marriage.