Line #91 Series/InspectorMorse


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6	[[caption-width-right:350:''"Coded messages, murder -- [[NightmareFuelStationAttendant right up my street]]. It's not a bad way to start the day."'']]
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8	''Inspector Morse'' was a British DetectiveDrama based on [[Literature/InspectorMorse the novels]] by Creator/ColinDexter, which ran from 1987 to 2000. Set among the dreaming spires of UsefulNotes/{{Ox\|bridge}}ford, it starred Creator/JohnThaw as the grumpy, brilliant and beer-loving Detective Chief Inspector "[[LastNameBasis Inspector]]" Morse, and Creator/KevinWhately as his cheerful [[UsefulNotes/NorthEastEngland Geordie]] sidekick Detective Sergeant Robbie Lewis. During the course of each episode, the pair would investigate a murder, which would often involve complex university politics, bright but emotional students and the opportunity for Morse to utilise his love of [[CulturedBadass classical music, literature and cryptic crossword puzzles]]. Baddies are usually rich, arrogant, and well-connected.
9
10	Broadcast on Creator/{{ITV}}, the show was immensely popular in Britain, and John Thaw's portrayal of Morse is generally considered one of British television's most iconic characters. Still repeated fairly frequently on [=ITV3=] in Britain and Creator/{{PBS}} in the United States.
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12	Sergeant Lewis later received his own spin-off in ''Series/{{Lewis}}'', joined by pathologist Laura Hobson (Clare Holman) as the only other regular returnee from this series. A {{prequel}}, ''Series/{{Endeavour}}'', set in [[TheSixties the 60s]] and starring Shaun Evans as the young Detective Constable Morse, aired in 2012; it was renewed for a series airing from April 2013.
13
14	The show has also seen a 2010 theatre play adaption, ''Morse -- House of Ghosts'', where the role of Morse was played by Creator/ColinBaker. BBC later made an audio adaption of the play in 2017, this time with Neil Pearson in the role of Morse.
15	----
16	!!This show provides examples of:
17	%% Zero Context Example entries are not allowed on the wiki. All such entries have been commented out. Add context before uncommenting.
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19	* AdaptationalAlternateEnding: In the book of ''Last Seen Wearing'', Morse realises that Valerie (the missing schoolgirl) is alive and that he's even spoken to her without realising who she was. But by the time he's worked this out, she's disappeared again. In the TV episode with the same title, he succeeds in returning her to her family.
20	* AdaptationalNationality: Lewis was Welsh in the novels. In the series, he's a Geordie.
21	* AdaptationalTimespanChange: The events of the novel ''Service of All the Dead'' take place over several months, with Morse having to take over the investigation mid-way through from [[CluelessDetective Inspector Bell]] who comes down with the flu. In the TV adaptation of the same name, the entire case takes place over a span of a few days (save for the court sequence at the end, which is a few weeks later) and thus drastically cuts down Bell's role, having Morse leading the investigation from the start.
22	* AgeLift: Lewis was in his early sixties in the novels. In the series, he's a much younger family man.
23	* AfraidOfBlood: Morse has quite a distaste for gore and won't look at fresh corpses unless he absolutely has to. Being a murder detective, he sometimes does have to.
24	* AlasPoorVillain: "Deadly Slumber" marks one of the few times Morse shows deep sympathy for the killer. [[spoiler:The killer's young daughter had been rendered brain dead during what should have been a minor surgery thanks to cost-cutting on the part of the clinic which treated her, and the man had taken revenge on the family which owned the clinic. When the AssholeVictim's son calls the killer a monster, Morse bluntly replies that he had been ''made'' monstrous.]]
25	* AloofLeaderAffableSubordinate: Morse and Lewis, respectively.
26	* AlwaysMurder: Well, 98% Murder, with the remainder being divided between actual suicides and deaths from natural causes. The only true aversion comes in "The Wench Is Dead," in which nobody dies at all in the story's present-day setting, while in the historical segment [[spoiler:Joanna Franks faked her death, and the boat crew had the misfortune to be falsely convicted of her death and executed]]. "Dead on Time" is a borderline case, as there's only one death involved, [[spoiler:and it actually turns out to be an assisted suicide, which is technically still a crime, but only about comparable to manslaughter in terms of punishment]].
27	* AMFMCharacterization: Morse's favourite music is opera, which is echoed in the soundtracks to the television series, along with original music by Barrington Pheloung.
28	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: A pretty literal example occurs in "Masonic Mysteries" when the BigBad tries to murder Morse by setting his flat on fire while he sleeps. After surviving the attempt, Morse finds out that the device that started the fire was concealed in a tape of a notoriously bad version of ''Theatre/TheMagicFlute''. Amusingly, Morse seems more annoyed at the notion of having that recording in his collection than he does the attempt on his life or the near-destruction of his flat.
29	* AssholeVictim: Quite a few, but the ultimate has to be Ted Brooks in The Daughters of Cain. [[spoiler:His drug dealing led to the death of a student. And then he murdered a tutor who discovered this. And he also beats his wife and his daughter. Oh, and the TV series actually ''improves'' on his character from the books where his abuse of his step daughter is [[{{Squick}} sexual]].]]
30	* AuthorAppeal:
31	** Creator/ColinDexter's love of crosswords and opera are big parts of Morse's character and important to many of the plotlines. Later on, he got Dexter's type 2 diabetes as well.
32	** Lewis' love of cricket is definite Author Appeal as well, for both Dexter and Creator/KevinWhately.
33	* TheBadGuyWins: The murderer in "The Last Enemy" ends up achieving everything he set out to do, with the only thing that went wrong being that Morse eventually caught him. Even then, as Lewis openly acknowledges, there's no way the murderer will ever be charged with anything since [[spoiler:he'll be dead in a few months anyway from cancer]], and any halfway competent lawyer would easily get him off on an insanity plea.
34	** The murderer in "Deadly Slumber" is implicitly another case, [[spoiler: despite ending up killed himself, as he achieves his revenge on the married doctors whose negligence and fraud resulted in his daughter's brain damage.]].
35	* BatmanGambit: In "The Day of the Devil", a serial rapist escapes from prison and murders several people [[spoiler:before being shot dead by police. Turns out his female psychiatrist arranged the whole thing -- she convinced him the other members of his gang had betrayed him, but was actually one of his victims who'd been raped by the gang.]]
36	* BetterManhandleTheMurderWeapon: Happens on quite a few occasions. Even Morse finds himself on the wrong end of this trope in "Masonic Mysteries."
37	* TheBigBoard: Morse makes use of one in his sitting room in "The Dead of Jericho".
38	* BitterAlmonds: Not stated by name, but in "The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn", Max and Morse are able to detect cyanide by smelling a glass.
39	* {{Blackmail}}: Pops up in several episodes, with the blackmailer getting murdered more often than not. The plot of 'Sins of the Fathers' revolves around a case of historical blackmail: in the early 1900s one of the partners of a brewery took full control over the business after running the other partner out of town. However the blackmailer failed to get their victim to formally relinquish their shares of the brewery - an oversight which leads to the death of most of the blackmailer's descendants nearly a century later.
40	* BluffTheImposter: In "The Settling of the Sun", Morse does this to a German visitor to Oxford, [[spoiler:who isn't actually German]].
41	* {{Bowdlerise}}: With the series often being broadcast during the day, this can happen quite heavily. In particular, the initial daytime edit of "Service of all the Dead" was severely chopped up to remove a subplot which involved a ten year old boy being murdered, rendering the end product barely coherent (fortunately, more recent versions of that episode just remove the reveal of the boy's corpse).
42	* BritishBrevity: While each series is between 3 and 5 episodes long, each episode is an hour and forty minutes!
43	** It ran for seven regular series and one series of one-off yearly specials as well, another aversion of this trope.
44	** This also applies to ''Lewis'' and ''Endeavour'' as well, all three series only have 3-5 episodes per series on average, however they are all at least 7 series long and have hour and 40 minute long episodes. Curiously all three series meet the exact same total of 33 episodes.
45	* CartwrightCurse: Morse has a couple of romantic entanglements across the series, but with the exception of Adele Cecil, none of them lasts longer than a single episode.
46	* ChivalrousPervert: Morse is very much this in the early novels, but [[CharacterisationMarchesOn less so later on and in the TV version]].
47	* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Grayling Russell vanishes after the third season and, unlike Max, doesn't even get a token explanation as to where she went. The next regular pathologist, Laura Hobson doesn't show up until near the very end of the show's run.
48	* ClearMyName: In "Masonic Mysteries", the murderer arranges matters so that Morse is found standing over the victim's body with the murder weapon in his hand. Unsurprisingly, he's arrested and has to prove his own innocence.
49	* ClimbingClimax: In the episode "Service of all the Dead," Morse chases the murderer up a church tower. Note that Morse is not only AfraidOfBlood as noted above, he's also got a serious fear of heights.
50	* ConMan: In "The Death of the Self," Morse is quick to suspect Russell Clark, a convicted fraudster, of involvement in the murder.
51	* CoolCar: Morse's red Jaguar Mark II.
52	* TheCoroner: There were three regular ones -- Max in Series 1 and 2, Grayling Russell in Series 3, and Laura Hobson in the specials (which are considered as series 8) -- and a variety of one-off ones in Series 4-7.
53	** Max also appears in every series of ''Endeavour'' and Laura in every series of ''Lewis''.
54	* CreatorCameo: Series creator Colin Dexter would make a cameo in every episode.
55	* [[BaseballEpisode Cricket Episode]]: "Deceived by Flight", which sees Lewis go undercover with an Oxford alumni cricket team.
56	* CrosswordPuzzle: Solving cryptic crosswords is a big part of Morse’s character.
57	* DaChief: Chief Superintendent Strange veers into this on occasion... in a very British way, of course.
58	* DarkerAndEdgier:
59	** Series 1 and 2 featured a lot more in the way of profanity and graphic violence. However, the show's creators greatly toned this down from Series 3 onwards, as it became obvious to ITV that the show performed very well in daytime repeats, and the edits required to broadcast the early episodes before the watershed could be quite severe. Starting with Series 3 (and continuing on into ''Lewis'' and ''Endeavour''), the episode generally didn't require any cuts to be shown in the daytime.
60	** "Service of All The Dead," even compared to most other episodes of the show. Not only does it have the highest bodycount of any ''Morse'' episode, it also features themes of pedophilia and infanticide -- the latter of which the killer gleefully admits doing ForTheEvulz -- and even has Morse knowingly committing perjury to get the murderer's accomplice off with a lighter prison sentence, simply because he's attracted to her.
61	** "Dead On Time" is one of the most downright bleak episodes that features themes of suicide [[spoiler: pacts]] and contains DeathOfAChild, not to mention its incredibly depressing DownerEnding.
62	** "The Day Of The Devil" features themes of Satanism, domestic abuse, rape and animal murder. The episode's main villain, John Peter Barrie, is also one of the most disturbing and insane in the entire series, being a Satan-worshipping serial rapist and MasterOfDisguise. It's also one of the bloodiest and most violent episodes in the series to boot.
63	* DeathByAdaptation: Mr. Greenaway, the man in the next hospital bed to Morse in "The Wench is Dead". In the book he recovers from his operation; not so in the series.
64	* DeathFakedForYou: Unintentionally done in [[spoiler: "The Setting of the Sun".]] The victims of the episode cooked up a very elaborate plot to murder a man, which involved obscuring the time of his death by employing a body double to act as him during a public dinner. Unfortunately for them their would-be victim wound up swapping places with the body double, leading to the double being killed in his place. The intended victim then decided that he very much liked the freedom that his 'death' bought him, and spends the episode elminating all the people who knew about the plot so that the truth wouldn't come out.
65	* DeathOfAChild:
66	** In "Dead on Time". We see the death of a baby in a flashback.
67	** "Cherubim & Seraphim" has multiple teen suicides, one of which is Morse's niece.
68	** In "Service of All the Dead", the murderer also kills the child of the man who had an affair with his wife.
69	* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: [[spoiler:In the novels, Morse dies due to diabetes. In the series, he dies of a heart attack]].
70	* DidTheyOrDidntThey: In "Fat Chance", it's hinted that Morse may have spent the night with Emma Pickford. He certainly arrives at the police station in a very good mood the next morning -- and his {{leitmotif}} is played in a major key, for the first time in five years.
71	* DiegeticSwitch[=/=]LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: Both are employed throughout the series, usually by way of Morse's love of classical music.
72	* DirtyCop: DCI Martin Johnson in "The Way Through The Woods" is a softer example. He learned that a suspected murderer recanted part of his confession before dying, but chose not to report it upwards to allow the case to close.
73	* DisappointedInYou: Morse is disappointed with Lewis' past actions on the investigation in "The Way Through The Woods", when he was temporarily assigned to another inspector and they didn't look too hard into a murder after getting a questionable confession.
74	* DisconnectedByDeath: In 'The Wolvercote Tongue'.
75	* DistaffCounterpart:
76	** Dr. Grayling Russell is loosely this to Morse. While she has a different job and is significantly younger than Morse, she has a similar personality, a love of classical music and opera, and an EmbarrassingFirstName.
77	** Laura Hobson, on the other hand, was initially more the Distaff Counterpart of Max, due to her much more irreverent attitude to her job and straight-talking nature, although as time went on (and especially in ''Lewis'') she became a much more distinct character.
78	* DownerEnding:
79	** "Dead on Time" ends with the woman who's apparently the nearest Morse has ever had to a true love [[spoiler:turn out to have assisted her husband in killing himself, then tried to use the death to falsely pin a murder charge on her son-in-law, before committing suicide herself]]. The only thing preventing it from being even ''more'' of a downer ending is the fact that Lewis destroyed the tape that confirmed she was involved in the former two actions.
80	** "Deadly Slumber". [[spoiler:Michael Steppings succeeds in destroying the Brewsters for what they did to his daughter, but he ends up committing suicide, the daughter is taken off life support, and the Brewsters' son now has no parents.]]
81	** "The Remorseful Day". After the collapse of the only true relationship he's actually had in the series, Morse's health declines throughout the episode, [[spoiler:eventually resulting in him dying of a heart attack. At least he's able to solve the case shortly before he dies]].
82	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
83	** The first two seasons have a somewhat different feel to the rest of the show, with the show's storylines and visual style being much grittier, Morse being more morally ambiguous and Lewis more of a BumblingSidekick, the soundtracks being more minimalist and typically done via synthesizer, and the series making much more frequent use of profanity and graphic violence.
84	** In several early episodes, Morse sticks by the maxim that the person who discovered the body is most likely the killer. This soon switches to Morse believing that the last person to see the victim alive should be treated as the prime suspect, with him specifically decrying detectives who point the finger of suspicion at whoever discovered the body (not least because Morse ''himself'' ends up being accused of more than one murder thanks to this logic)..
85	* EmbarrassingFirstName: [[spoiler:Morse's first name is "Endeavour"]], leading Lewis to comment: "You poor sod."
86	* EmbarrassingNickname: Morse's college nickname of "Pagan", revealed in "Deceived by Flight" (because he refused to use his ''Christian'' name), isn't much of an improvement.
87	* EurekaMoment: Often supplied by a passing comment from Sergeant Lewis.
88	* EveryCarIsAPinto: The climax of [[spoiler: "Cherubim and Seraphim"]] involves a car chase through the woods, which ends after the main suspect's car crashes into a tree and immediately goes up in a ball of flames.
89	* EverythingIsOnline: In "Masonic Mysteries", a villain manages to hack the police database, alter Morse's file and frame him... after having taken a single computing course while in prison. However, Lewis does point out that the Internet is only one possible way he did it, and that as a notorious ConMan he may have been able to trick someone into giving him physical access to the system.
90	* ExtremelyColdCase: In "The Wench Is Dead", Morse is laid up in hospital and passes the time by reinvestigating a murder case from Oxford during the 1860s, which he suspects resulted in three wrongful convictions. The murder case is fictional, but was inspired by a real 1839 case.
91	* FakingTheDead: In [[spoiler: "Service of All the Dead"]] and [[spoiler: "The Way Through the Woods"]], the murderer ends up being someone who's established to be dead very early on in the episode.
92	* ForegoneConclusion: Morse is convinced that the missing girl in 'Last Seen Wearing' is dead. [[spoiler: She isn't, and in the televison adaption he even manages to get her to return home.]]
93	* FramingTheGuiltyParty: In "The Setting of the Sun", a tape full of cocaine is planted on one of the victims in an attempt to make the police believe that the murder was drug related. Turns out the dead man ''was'' actually a drug smuggler.
94	* FrameUp: [[spoiler:In "Dead on Time", a couple plot to make the husband's assisted suicide look like murder in order to land their son-in-law (who caused the death of the couple's daughter and grandchild) in prison with a murder charge.]]
95	* GuiltyPleasures: One of the characters in "The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn" is embarrassed to have been caught having attended a screening of ''Film/LastTangoInParis'', almost treating it as if he had gone to a pornographic cinema. In the original novel, it ''had'' been a pornographic film.
96	* HappyEndingOverride: "The Wench Is Dead", the originally planned final episode ends with Morse in the first stable relationship he's been in in years and quietly deciding to retire early to preserve his health after solving the Victorian Oxford canal murder cold case. "The Remorseful Day" [[spoiler:reveals that Morse's relationship collapsed due to him cheating with a woman who would become the murder victim in what would turn out to be his final case, as he dies of a heart attack by the end.]]
97	* HerosClassicCar: Morse's red Jaguar Mark II, as an iconic element of the show.
98	* HighClassCallGirl: Kay Brooks in "The Daughters of Cain".
99	* HistoricalInJoke: In "The Daughters of Cain", the Morseverse equivalent of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Church%2c_Oxford#History Christ Church]] is called "Wolsey College".
100	* HopeSpot: In 'Dead on Time' [[spoiler: Susan's accomplice tries to talk her out of killing herself by reminding her that there are people who still care for her, namely Morse. Unfortunately all this does is cement her resolve to go through with the deed, as she explains to him that [[FrameUp her]] [[BestServedCold actions]] have already ruined any chance of a successful relationship with Morse.]]
101	* HospitalHottie: In "The Wench is Dead", Morse is quick to note how attractive his nurses are.
102	* InspectorLestrade: Sergeant Lewis to Morse most of the time. Although in later series he sometimes found the right answer before Morse and even once successfully hid the truth from Morse to spare Morse's feelings.
103	* IrregularSeries: Became this after the seventh series, running four one-off episodes over the next six years.
104	* KarmaHoudini:
105	** Morse views the BigBad of [[spoiler: "Cherubim & Seraphim"]] as one, since he ended up dying before Morse could really throw the book at him.
106	** Averted at the tail end of [[spoiler: "Death Is Now My Neighbour".]] It appears that [[spoiler: Clixby Bream]] will face no repercussions for [[spoiler: coercing a woman into sleeping with him, which directly contributed to her death]]...until [[spoiler: Morse runs him out of Oxford by threatening to leak his misdeeds to the press.]]
107	** Lewis sees the [[spoiler: accomplices to the second murder]] comitted in [[spoiler: "The Daughters of Cain"]] as this, bitterly protesting the decision not to pursue prosecution. On the other hand, Morse is happy to look the other way considering [[spoiler: that the vicitim made their lives a living hell for years, and the actual murderer has passed on.]]
108	** Drives the plot of [[spoiler: "Dead on Time", where a couple plot to get their son-in-law put away for murder after discovering that he got away scott free after causing the car crash that killed their daughter and grandson.]]
109	* LeadPoliceDetective: Inspector Morse. Offers a variation on the situation where a long-running show passes the torch: Lewis never became Lead Police Detective on ''Inspector Morse'', but he did [[Series/{{Lewis}} get his own show]].
110	* {{Leitmotif}}: Morse has his own one which appears in the theme and in the incidental music throughout the series.
111	** In a more villainous and unsettling example, the serial killer in "Driven To Distraction" is always seen playing Marion Montgomery's version of "Why Can't You Behave" [[SoundtrackDissonance while stalking victims]].
112	* LethalLetterOpener: In "Service of All the Dead", one of the victims is stabbed with a crucifix-shaped letter opener.
113	* LiteraryAllusionTitle: "The Wench is Dead", "Greeks Bearing Gifts".
114	* LongRunners: The show ran for 33 episodes across 13 years, which is an incredibly long time for a British series. The franchise - known as the 'Morseverse' kept on running long after, with ''Series/{{Lewis}}'' lasting nine series (also 33 episodes in total) and ''Series/{{Endeavour}}'' also lasting nine series (35 episodes total).
115	* LoopholeAbuse: In "Twilight of the Gods", Andrew Baydon uses one legal maneouvre after another to block Lithuanian academic Victor Ignotas from telling the world that, [[spoiler:rather than a Holocaust survivor, he was, in fact, a concentration camp guard.]] However, Victor will soon be charged with attempted murder after attempting to assassinate Baydon and hitting an opera singer instead - and there's no rule to block him [[TakingYouWithMe spilling his guts in the witness box]].
116	* LovelyAssistant: Joanna Franks, the victim in "The Wench is Dead", had previously assisted in her husband's conjuring act.
117	* TheMaster: In real life, heads of colleges have a number of different titles (Warden, President, Rector...). But ''Inspector Morse'' villains seem to gravitate to colleges where the traditional title is Master.
118	** Matthew Copley-Barnes, Master of Beaufort College has a decades-long history of [[spoiler:abusing children]].
119	** Clixby Bream, the Master of Lonsdale College in "Death Is Now My Neighbour", is a very nasty piece of work and even [[spoiler:harasses, manipulates and takes advantage of a woman throughout the episode which ultimately causes her death]].
120	* MayDecemberRomance: "The Secret of Bay 5B" indicates that one of these is starting to develop between Morse and Grayling Russell. The latter disappears from the series after that episode and is never mentioned again, leaving it unclear as to whether or not it actually went anywhere.
121	* MentorOccupationalHazard: In extremely compressed form in "Masonic Mysteries": Desmond [=McNutt=] is introduced as Morse's former mentor from when Morse was a sergeant, and promptly becomes the killer's next victim.
122	* MoreDeadlyThanTheMale:
123	** [[spoiler: "Day of the Devil",]] where the [[spoiler:prison psychologist]] manages to get both of the men who wronged her killed while outwitting Morse and Lewis for most of the episode.
124	** In [[spoiler:"Death Is Now My Neighbour"]], Strange, upon learning that [[spoiler: the Storr's]] were responsible for the murders, immediately assumes that the husband was the mastermind. He is noticably shocked when Morse corrects him by saying it was the wife.
125	* MyBelovedSmother: One of the two murderers in "The Sins of the Fathers" lives with his very overbearing mother. Subverted in that despite her obnoxious behaviour, she isn't actually responsible at all for the murders, and that it was his embittered old grandmother who poisoned his mind at an early age.
126	* MurderByMistake: The first victim in "Death Is Now My Neighbour" winds up dead after the murderer mistakes her home for the home of their intended victim.
127	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: The murderer in "Happy Families" actually says this out loud after it turns out that her accomplice, [[spoiler:Lady Balcombe]], disregarded the warning not to tell her supposed (and emotionally disturbed) long-lost daughter of their relationship, resulting in her being stabbed to death.
128	* NaughtyBirdwatching: In "The Dead of Jericho", it's discovered that George Jackson spied on the woman whose death sets the plot in motion. She didn't have any curtains, and the window of her bedroom was opposite his house.
129	* NeverGiveTheCaptainAStraightAnswer: "In Service of all the Dead", after Lewis spots a corpse from the top of a belltower, he tells the exhausted Morse to 'come and see for himself'.
130	* NeverOneMurder: Generally there are around three or four murders an episode. Sometimes the series plays with this trope, however -- "The Wolvercote Tongue" for instance has one actual murder, one death from natural causes, and one person who [[spoiler:ends up breaking his ''own'' neck while fighting with an angry husband]].
131	* NeverSuicide: Subverted in that Morse often makes a point of investigating suicides.
132	* NewscasterCameo: The then presenters of what was {{Creator/ITV}}’s Central News South (which covered the news for Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire at the time of the show’s airing) seemed to have had a second career on reporting all the murders that Morse ended up investigating judging from the amount of times they appeared in the show. One then later appeared on Series/{{Lewis}} as an interviewer.
133	* NoFullNameGiven:
134	** Until the third-last episode, Morse was only ever referred to by his rank and/or surname.
135	** Max is never given a surname while on this show, though in ''Endeavour'' his full name is revealed to be Max [=DeBryn=].
136	* TheNotLoveInterest:
137	** Morse is too ... ''Morse'' to be exactly paternal, but Lewis still manages to be his MostImportantPerson, to the point that he [[spoiler: leaves a third of his estate to Lewis]] and Lewis finds that one of the few pictures in Morse's house is of himself and Morse in front of Morse's [[CoolCar Jag]].
138	** The episode 'The Way Through The Woods' features Morse investigating a crime previously investigated by Lewis and Morse's rival DCI Johnson. A lot of the episode plays as if Lewis has returned to Morse after having an affair with Johnson.
139	* ObviouslyEvil: Played with; characters who ''behave'' in such a manner are generally innocent, but characters who are played by actors well-known for playing villains almost always turn out to be murderers, or at least accomplices.
140	* OldCopYoungCop: Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis.
141	* OldFashionedRowboatDate: Morse turns an interview with a (young and female) person of interest into one of these.
142	* OlderThanTheyLook: Creator/JohnThaw was forty-four when he started the series, but because of his prematurely white hair, many viewers thought he was about a decade older.
143	* OurLawyersAdvisedThisTrope: One episode had to have a particularly embarrassing disclaimer added to the end credits. The story involved Morse investigating a murder in a screwed-up upper-class family, with an extreme AssholeVictim named Sir John Balcombe. Unfortunately, it was realised too late that the AssholeVictim had exactly the same first name, surname, and knightly title as a senior judge, forcing a disclaimer to be read out after the episode explaining that the character had [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial ABSOLUTELY NOTHING]] to do with the real person.
144	* PassedOverPromotion: It is mentioned several times that Morse would have been promoted above and beyond Detective Chief Inspector, but his cynicism and lack of ambition, coupled also with veiled hints that he may have made enemies in high places, frustrate his progression despite his Oxford connections.
145	* ThePreciousPreciousCar: Morse's treasured Jaguar is hit in the passenger door in the pilot - ''twice''.
146	* PutOnABus:
147	** The series' original pathologist, Max is mentioned as having been forced to retire after suffering a stroke between the second and third seasons.
148	** Adele Cecil, who becomes Morse's girlfriend near the back end of the series, disappears in the final episode with only a brief comment that she had decided to move to Australia and break off their relationship. [[spoiler:It turns out later in the episode that Morse very likely cheated on her with a woman who eventually became the final murder victim he ever investigated]].
149	** DCI Bell appeared in the first episode as a rival with Morse for the post of Superintendent. He appeared in one other episode supervising Morse's investigation and was not heard from since.
150	* RaceLift: In the televised version of "The Wench Is Dead", Fiona the nurse is black.
151	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Lewis calls Morse out in "The Way Through the Woods" for not accepting that he's a decent detective. Morse retorts that he ''had'' thought so, but was in doubt after the way he and Johnson were handling the investigation.
152	* RetCanon: In a similar way to how Bernard Cornwell ended up retconning Series/{{Sharpe}}'s backstory in the novels to better fit Creator/SeanBean's portrayal of the character on TV, so Colin Dexter ended up doing the same to Lewis in the novels - changing him from a Welshman close to retirement age into a younger Geordie to better match Creator/KevinWhately's TV counterpart.
153	* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Occurs in several episodes.
154	** [[spoiler: "Service of All the Dead"]], where [[spoiler: first 'murder' victim]] is not as dead as Morse and Lewis thought, and uses the opportunity this brings him to kill everyone he felt wronged him.
155	** [[spoiler: "The Last Enemy"]], where a [[spoiler: a brain damaged man with mere months to live]] is compelled to murder everyone who even remotely slighted him over the course of his career.
156	** [[spoiler: "Happy Families"]] where the relative of a murdered man ends up killing nearly all of the members of the family who caused his death.
157	* RomanticRunnerUp: "The Last Enemy" reveals that Morse was the unlucky runner up in the past. The woman in question turns up again in his life in "Dead on Time", at which point shes seems to be much more receptive to his advances...[[spoiler:only for history to wind up repeating itself, as once again she ultimately [[TogetherInDeath chooses her husband]] over Morse.]]
158	* RoomFullOfCrazy: In "Masonic Mysteries", the murderer takes pictures of Morse throughout the episode, and pins them up in such a room. In "Fat Chance", one character is obsessed with the idea that all women are harlots, and has dedicated a room to pictures demonstrating this.
159	* ScarpiaUltimatum: In "Death Is Now My Neighbour", a female character agrees to sleep with an Oxford Don if he'll give her husband the position of master. Afterward he laughs at her and says [[ILied he never had any intention of making him master]], since the husband had already slept with the don's wife.
160	* SceneryPorn: The show frequently featured shots of the skyline of Oxford and its iconic landmarks.
161	** "Service Of All The Dead" has many scenes set within a Catholic church, and makes good use of it. The atmospheric direction of Peter Hammond also helps.
162	** "Promised Land" is set (and was filmed) in Australia, and makes sure to get in shots of the Sydney opera house and skyline.
163	** "The Death Of The Self" is set in Italy, so naturally there are lots of shots of the Italian countryside and cities.
164	* SentencedToDownUnder: In "Promised Land", Morse and Lewis are trying to find a former gang member who was moved to Australia under a witness protection scheme. When the Australian police find out about this, they remark that they thought Britain had decided to stop sending them their criminals.
165	** This trope is later referenced in "The Wench Is Dead" when Morse is forced to go on sick leave and busies himself by re-investigating a murder case from Oxford during the 1860s, which he suspects resulted in three wrongful convictions. The men were sentenced to hang, but one found religion in prison and became a model inmate. For this his sentence was commuted at the last minute to transportation (presumably to Australia given the time period).
166	* SesquipedalianSmith: [[spoiler:Endeavour]] Morse himself.
167	* SeriesFauxnale: "The Wench is Dead" was written as being potentially the last episode of the series, as they had exhausted all of Colin Dexter's books. The following year Dexter published the final Morse novel, "The Remorseful Day," which would become the true finale for the TV series a year after that.
168	* SettingUpdate: The novel series began publication in 1975 with a book set in 1970. It was only to be expected that the TV adaptations from 1987 would update to the then-present day. The effect of the Setting Update only becomes pronounced with the prequel ''Series/{{Endeavour}}'', initially set in 1965 - it follows the TV chronology, so its setting is 20+ years before the original series, not five.
169	* ShoutOut: In "Service of All The Dead", Morse and another policeman recite the famous exchange from the ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' story "Silver Blaze":
170	-->'''Morse:''' "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." \
171	'''Policeman:''' "The dog did nothing in the night-time." \
172	'''Both:''' "That was the curious incident."
173	* SignificantAnagram: Constantly. Colin Dexter is a major crossword fan and often included anagrams of important character's names.
174	* SleepsInTheNude: In "The Daughters of Cain" the police, trying to find out whether Kay Brooks might have been away from her fiance for part of the night, ask him how she was dressed when she woke him the following morning. He replies that she wasn't, but that's what he'd expect since they don't wear anything in bed.
175	* SmallReferencePools: Completely averted due to both Morse and the show's writers having an extensive knowledge of classical music, leading to some obscure references that [[GeniusBonus only a few fans will get]].
176	* SpinOff: ''Series/{{Lewis}}'' and ''Series/{{Endeavour}}'', the latter also acts as a {{Main/Prequel}}.
177	* StaircaseTumble: How [[spoiler:Shelly Cornford]] meets her end in "Death Is Now My Neighbour", after she tries to flee from her irate husband and falls down one of Lonsdale's stairways.
178	* SummationGathering: Morse arranges one of these in "The Dead of Jericho".
179	* TakeMeOutAtTheBallGame: In "Deceived by Flight", one of the murders happens during a cricket match in which Lewis is playing.
180	* TakeThat:
181	** Inter-university ribbing variety. Kershaw jokingly compares Nuffield College to a "double-glazing establishment" in "The Wench Is Dead".
182	** Also one at the Oxbridge set in "Ghost in the Machine":
183	-->'''Professor Ullman:''' Surely you don't think-
184	-->'''Morse:''' Oh I wouldn't presume to think. Not at an Oxford college.
185	** And in "Twilight of The Gods"
186	-->'''Morse:''' Allowing the pages of [[UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers The Sun]] to pass before your eyes does not amount to reading, Lewis.
187	* TeacherStudentRomance: Several episodes have a professor who has settled down with one of his students. The majority of the deaths in [[spoiler: "The Wolvercote Tongue"]] stem from one these husbands catching his pretty young wife in bed with his colleague.
188	** In "Last Seen Wearing", Morse and Lewis believe that Valerie may have been involved with one of her teachers. [[spoiler: They're right, and her disappearence turns out to be because she's run off with him. Their digging also unearths that the school's deputy head was also carrying with her pupils.]]
189	** In the [[spoiler:"The Daughters of Cain"]], a teacher seduces her student to secure his help in pulling off her murderous scheme. Though it's implied that she does genuinely have some fond feelings for him and doesn't merely see him as a pawn.
190	* TelevisionGeography: Morse was seemingly able to walk between Oxford landmarks which are in reality several miles apart in a matter of seconds.
191	* TemporarySubstitute:
192	** In "The Infernal Serpent" Chief Superintendent Rennie is filling in for Strange as DaChief.
193	** Lewis isn't in 'The Wench is Dead'; his place is taken by a number of characters, chiefly Constable Kershaw.
194	* ThisIsWhatTheBuildingWillLookLike: The college that Baydon plans to endow in 'Twilight of the Gods'.
195	* TheThreeFacesOfEve: The trio involved in murder of [[spoiler:Ted Brooks]] in [[spoiler:"The Daughters of Cain"]]: the mastermind [[spoiler: Julia Stevens]] as The Wife, the distractingly beautiful [[spoiler: Kay Brooks]] as The Seductress, and [[spoiler: Brenda Brooks]], who didn't take part in the scheme but agreed to look the other way, as The Child. Notably in that The Child is actually the oldest of the lot.
196	* ThirteenIsUnlucky: A plot point in "Death Is Now My Neighbour", where the builders of a street omitted house number 13. This leads to the occupant of number 17 being killed by mistaken, when the murderer comes in through the back gardens and was aiming for the one who lived in number 15.
197	* TogetherInDeath: [[spoiler:Susan ends up [[DrivenToSuicide joining her husband]] in the climax to 'Dead on Time'.]]
198	* TrademarkFavoriteDrink: Morse loves real ale and whisky.
199	* TruckDriversGearChange: The "Morse code" rhythm in the theme song changes key halfway through the closing credits.
200	* TwistedEucharist: In the episode "The Day of the Devil", a group of Satanists are performing a Black Mass, only for one of them to be murdered by the VillainOfTheWeek, in costume as the Devil himself. In comparison to the grimness of the rest of the episode, it comes across almost as a comic interlude.
201	* VacationEpisode: There were two of them -- "Promised Land" in the fifth series (in which Morse and Lewis went to Australia) and "The Death of the Self" in the sixth (which saw them go to Italy).
202	* ViceCity: The network of Oxford University colleges is this in Morse's eyes.
203	* WhamLine: The penultimate line of the series, delivered to the just-apprehended murderer by Lewis: "[[spoiler:Inspector Morse is DEAD!]]"
204	* WhoMurderedTheAsshole: [[spoiler:Ted Brooks in "The Daughters of Cain", a wife beater who had caused the accidental death of an Oxford student through his drug dealing and murdered the tutor who was about to turn him in.]]
205	* WickedStepmother: Morse had a dreadful relationship with his stepmother Gwen. He claims that he only developing his love of reading poetry to annoy her, and that her petty bullying almost drove him to suicide. Fortunately, he has a much better relationship with his half-sister Joyce and her husband and children.
206	* WomenAreWiser: Played straight with Dr. Russell, who is consciously depicted as being much more focused, knowledgeable and sensible compared to her predecessor, Max, and even Morse himself to a certain degree. Defied by the much quirkier Dr. Hobson, who was a bit closer to BunnyEarsLawyer (but only a bit, mind you).
207	* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Combined with MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds, [[spoiler:Phil Hopkirk]] in "The Infernal Serpent". Already a widower, he discovered that his young daughter had been sexually abused by [[spoiler:Matthew Copley-Barnes]], and in a fit of drunken rage, went to assault him. Unfortunately, between the booze and the heavy rain that night, he ended up punching a completely different person -- still only with enough force that most people would have gotten nothing more a bad concussion, but the person he punched just happened to suffer a serious heart defect, resulting in his death. At the end of the epsiode, [[spoiler:Hopkirk]] destroys the garden he had spent months tending to in a (Anti-)VillainousBreakdown, before being dragged away by the police, an utterly broken man. As one last kicker, [[spoiler:Copley-Barnes]] ends up being murdered anyway, by another former victim.
208	* WorthyOpponent: [[spoiler:Julia Stevens in "The Daughters of Cain". She conspires with her cleaner and her cleaner's stepdaughter to kill their abusive husband/stepfather and recruits a student to help obtain the murder weapon and move the body. She sets it up beautifully, leaving next to no evidence of the stepdaughter's involvement and the wife too grief-stricken to say anything reliable. Plus, she's [[TakingYouWithMe dying of a brain tumor]] anyway, guaranteeing that even if it does come to trial, she'll already be dead.]] Morse attends her funeral to pay tribute.
209	* WrongGenreSavvy: In the very first episode, Morse becomes convinced he is in a modern day retelling of a Greek tragedy. "Sophocles did it."

Context Series / InspectorMorse