Title: Music to Die For
Directed by: Bill Anderson
Written by: Dusty Hughes
Air Date: March 2, 2008
Previous: And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea
Next: Life Born of Fire
Guest Starring: Tom Goodman-Hill, Niall Buggy, Ben Batt, Rachael Blake, Bradley James
"Music to Die For" is the second episode of the second season of Lewis, aka Inspector Lewis in the United States.
An Oxford don, R.G. Cole, a scholar of 20th century Germany and Eastern Europe, is instructing a young student, Milo Hardy, on his paper about the fall of communism in East Germany. Hardy is a member of the Oxford boxing club, as is Jack Roth—Jack and Milo are rivals for the affections of a lovely young lady, Sarah Kriel.
Cole and his friend Richard Helm attend an illegal bare-knuckle boxing match, which is won by Jack Roth. Afterwards, R.G. and his friend Richard Helm go to a fancy wine bar owned by Sarah Kriel's parents, Hansie and Ann. R.G. is quite drunk, and both he and Richard are thrown out. They retire to Richard's house...where R.G. is strangled!
Robbie Lewis and his partner James Hathaway are on the case. They begin to discover links to the past, the Cold War, and Communist East Germany. Richard Helm and his mother Walli left East Germany for England in the 1980s after Magnus Helm, his father and her husband was arrested by the Stasi and died in prison. Did Professor Cole know something about the betrayal of Magnus Helm to the Stasi? Or do Hansie and Ann Kriel, who also have nighclubs in Germany and have ties to shady German business interests? Or maybe the murder has something to do with the bareknuckle boxing ring: Ryan Gallen, the bouncer at the Kriel nightclub who threw Cole and Richard Helm out, actually runs the boxing racket, and Jack Roth was pressured to throw a fight. Milo Hardy goes to Germany to do some research. He must have discovered something important, because when he comes back to Oxford, he is murdered.
Meanwhile, Lewis is struggling with insomnia. He takes a fancy to attractive Ann Kriel, and they go out to dinner. This annoys Hathaway who has to point out that Ann is a suspect.
Tropes:
- The Boxing Episode: Jack Roth fights in an illegal bareknuckle boxing ring. Lewis and Hathaway show up there as part of a police raid that busts the ring.
- Butterfly of Doom: One courtesy of Morse. Turns out that during the 1980's, Morse had sent a letter to an East German professor thanking him for a book, marked with a UK police stamp instead of a regular postage stamp. This ended up causing the professor, Magnus Helm, to be imprisoned for being a spy and later shot, after an unscrupulous Stasi informant used this as "proof" of treason. The murders of several people during the episode were the result of either reprisals for the death of the professor or attempts by the informant to cover up what they'd done. As Lewis laments, in the end it all really boiled down to a borrowed book and the wrong stamp!
- Cartwright Curse: Lewis starts to develop feelings for Ann Kriel, a budding romance that is cut short when she turns out to be a murderer.
- Clock Tampering: Milo Hardy's watch was smashed in an effort to obscure the time of death, but the cops and Dr. Hobson quickly see through this.
- Conversation Cut: The detectives find out that the late Milo Hardy made a day trip to Germany. A baffled Lewis says "What was he doing in Berlin?" Cut to Milo's room, where Hathaway, going through Milo's stuff, says "Essay about Communist Europe!"
- Foreshadowing: The eventual romance between Lewis and Dr. Hobson was foreshadowed many times before it finally happened.
- Hidden Depths:
- Lewis, who usually comes off as an affable but not super-intellectual sort, has a working knowledge of German, which comes in handy in this case. He's able to figure out that the German phrase that Hathaway mistakes for "warm socks" actually means 1980s female fashion accessory "leg warmers," which leads to the conclusion that the killer must be a German woman: Ann Kriel.
- Lewis also catches both Hathway and Hansie Kriel by surprise with his knowledge of Wagner. He tells Hathaway that he got familiar with Wagner through his old partner Inspector Morse, who was a big Wagner fan. But Lewis does know Wagner's work, as shown at the Wagner concert when Hansie sneers that Lewis would probably prefer Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Lewis says that actually he likes Wagner with his "big chromatic shifts."
- Laser-Guided Karma: Ann tries to kill Richard at the end, bashing him on the head with a wrench as he opens the locks to the river, but in so doing she loses her balance, falls in to the river, and drowns. (And Richard survives.)
- The Law of Conservation of Detail: Lewis snags his clothing on a rose bush at the Kriel house. This is important later when a particular type of soil is found on Milo Hardy, proving he was moved from the place of death.
- Love Triangle: Milo Hardy and Jack Roth are rivals for Sarah Kriel. Jack seems to be winning, which is why Milo challenges him to a bareknuckle boxing match, which never happens because Milo is murdered.
- Murder by Mistake: A confused Ryan meant to kill Richard Helm, so he went to Helm's house and strangled the man he found there who had been yelling insults in German—R.G. Cole.
- Never One Murder: An absolute requirement for Lewis. The second murder is Milo Hardy, pushed out a window after he found something incriminating about the Magnus Helm case.
- Never Suicide: Milo Hardy's death is made out to look like a suicide, including a typewritten note that says "All for the love of Sarah." But Lewis says never to trust a suicide note that isn't handwritten, and sure enough it's murder.
- Posthumous Character: Inspector E. Morse, probably more so in this one than in any other Lewis episode. It turns out that Morse the Wagner fan was acquainted with the Helm family back in the day and that he helped Richard and Walli get to England after Magnus's death. We also learned that Walli Helm was Morse's girlfriend long ago and it's vaguely hinted that Richard might even be Morse's son. And if that weren't enough, it turns out that Inspector Morse accidentally set the whole train of events in motion, writing to the Helms in East Germany and sending the letter in an envelope that had an Oxford police frank, which got Magnus Helm arrested.
- Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Towards the end of the episode, Lewis is shown doing this with the CCTV footage of Ryan Gallen chucking R.G. and Richard out of the club.
- State Sec: Discussed Trope. Back in the 1980s, the Stasi of East German arrested Magnus Helm, and he died in prison. This is the motive for the murders: Ann Kriel was a Stasi informant, and she was the one who betrayed Magnus.
- Throwing the Fight: Discussed Trope: Jack Roth the amateur boxer was pressured to throw a bareknuckle fight, and refused. This seems like it might be a motive but turns out to be a red herring.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Not only did Ryan Gallen kill the wrong guy, he didn't have to kill anybody in the first place, as Richard Helm hadn't recognized Ann.
