Title: And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea
Directed by: Dan Reed
Written by: Alan Plater
Air Date: February 24, 2008
Previous: Expiation
Next: Music to Die For
Guest Starring: Haydn Gwynne, Tom Riley, Emily Beecham, Neil Pearson
"And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea" is the first episode of the second season of Lewis, aka Inspector Lewis in the United States.
A man, Reg Chapman, is seen at the dog-racing track, losing. Agitated, he calls an Oxford professor, Dr. Stringer, but Stringer ignores the call.
A lovely young Oxford art student, Nell Buckley, enjoys a quiet afternoon on the River Cherwell with her boyfriend/drudge, Philip Horton. Philip is a talented artist, but he has an odd manner, and is somewhere on the autism spectrum. Nell is a far more outgoing sort, who leads tours of Oxford for tourists in which she makes up complete nonsense for the rubes, like how J. R. R. Tolkien liked to play the banjo in bars. A visiting American, Quentin Jackson, catches her out when she misplaces the Cambridge Five spies (Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, et al) as students of Oxford.
DI Lewis and his junior partner DS Hathaway somewhat grudgingly attend Dr. Hobson's 50th birthday party. They see a police car across the street and use it as an excuse to leave—it turns out that Dr. Stringer saw a prowler lurking around his house.
Cut to the next morning, and Reg Chapman has been murdered! Chapman, who worked at the Bodleian Library as a handyman, was shot to death in the library basement. Lewis and Hathaway discover that Chapman was a gambling addict, and his wife Susan was about to leave him because of this. But maybe the killer is Susan's brother Mick Jeffrys, who hated his brother-in-law for being a loser. Or maybe it's Dr. Stringer, who was Chapman's sponsor in Gamblers Anonymous. Possibly the killer is Dr. Sandra Walters, a math professor who ran the local Gamblers Anonymous chapter. However, when Nell Buckley is murdered, Lewis and Hathaway turn their attention to Philip Horton.
Tropes:
- Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: Lewis and Hathaway are wondering how to escape the gaggle of drunk doctors that is Dr. Hobson's party. Lewis says "We could invent an emergency call." Immediately after this they hear police sirens in the street (headed to Dr. Stringer's house).Lewis: Maybe there is a God.
- Blackmail Backfire: The reason for the first murder. Stringer killed Reg Chapman because he was demanding a bigger piece of the forgery racket, or he'd go to the cops.
- Foreshadowing: The romance between Lewis and Hobson was foreshadowed from the earliest days of the show, and it's seen again here when Lewis tells Hathaway "I've got a date," and the show cuts to Lewis and Hobson in a park as he quizzes her about autism.
- The Gambling Addict: Reg Chapman, who was a hopeless gambling addict. Dr. Stringer says that the support group didn't help him at all. It turns out that Chapman was in the forgery ring basically to feed his gambling habit.
- Gambling Ruins Lives: Susan Chapman says that Reg's gambling habit lost him his job, lost the family their house, has left them broke, and had her on the verge of divorce.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Discussed and subverted. Phillip asks if Lewis and Hathaway are running the good cop/bad cop routine, and Lewis answers "No, you're a very luck lad, this is two good cops."
- He Knows Too Much: The reason for the second murder. Stringer and Walters found out that Nell, the gonzo artist, was going to publish the entire forgery operation as a weird art project. So they killed her.
- Hired to Hunt Yourself: Dr. Stringer, who had a gig with the library identifying forgeries of Romantic poets like Keats and Shelley, was part of a forgery ring selling fake Shelley papers.
- Hollywood Autism: Philip is somewhere on the spectrum. He has a strange lack of affect, he doesn't look people in the eye, and he lacks basic social skills. (When greeting Lewis and Hathaway, he says "I'm supposed to say, 'Would you like some tea?") But he's also an artist of staggering talent who can draw or paint anything after only a glance.
- Jerkass Has a Point: CS Innocent is usually Da Chief, but in this episode she's basically right when she chews out Lewis and Hathaway for walking over to Dr. Stringer's house, when they were drunk, to join the uniform cops responding to the report of a prowler.
- Master Forger: Although he does not even realize that he is one. Nell takes advantage of Philip's talent as an artist to get him to forge letters from Percy Shelley, which Nell and the forgery ring then sell as genuine.
- Never One Murder: An iron law of Lewis. The murder of Nell halfway through the episode leaves the detectives wondering about Nell's connection to Reg Chapman.
- Old Cop, Young Cop: Discussed Trope. Chief Innocent, irritated at Lewis and Hathaway for going over to Dr. Stringer's house when they'd been drinking, points out that the goal behind pairing a Young Cop with an Old Cop is so "the junior officer matures to the level of the senior," not the other way around.
- Shout-Out: Hathaway can't resist. When they're called to the scene of Reg Chapman's death, in the basement of the Bodleian, Hathaway says "You realize what we've got? The Body in the Library." (It's an Agatha Christie book.)
- Smart People Play Chess: A little joke relating to the hyper-intellectual Sgt. Hathaway. Lewis asks if Hathaway plays poker and Hathaway says no, he plays chess. Lewis's answer is a sarcastic "Why doesn't that surprise me."
- Title Drop: The poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a running theme and the title of the episode, a quote from Shelley's poem "Love's Philosophy", is said more than once.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: Dr. Walters ran the local Gamblers Anonymous chapter, Reg Chapman was a member, and Dr. Stringer was his sponsor. It isn't that important to the episode except that it's where they all met.
- Two Dun It: Dr. Walters and Dr. Stringer, who happened to be lovers and who were running a forgery racket together, committed the murders.
- Wacky Americans Have Wacky Names: Lewis and Hathaway are startled when the American antiques dealer reveals that his name is "Quentin Jackson." Mr. Jackson's parents were Duke Ellington admirers and they named him after Ellington's trombone player.
