YMMV / Inspector Morse

• Adaptation Displacement: The TV show is much better known than the original novels, and two changes they made — Lewis being younger rather than older than Morse, as well as being from Newcastle Upon Tyne rather than Welsh and Morse's car being a Jaguar rather than a Lancia — were eventually retconned by Dexter into his books.
• Bizarro Episode: "The Day Of The Devil" which centres around the manhunt for a Satan-worshipping serial rapist and Master of Disguise and features an unintentionally hilarious scene where said rapist dresses up as Satan and attacks some Satanists performing a black mass. For a series that's usually as laid-back and down-to-earth as Morse, this episode sticks out like a sore thumb.
  • A lesser example is "The Wench Is Dead", as there is actually no criminal case occurring in the present day, and Morse spends much of the episode hospitalised and trying to solve a decades-old Victorian murder instead to pass the time. It's also the only episode of the series not to feature any appearance by Lewis.
• Cant Unhear It: John Thaw and Kevin Whately as Morse and Lewis, to the point that Colin Dexter started writing the characters with the actors in mind, which meant having to retcon Lewis into a younger Geordie more in line with his actor rather that the older Welshman he was originally written as.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Funny Moments:
  • Morse and Lewis investigate a case related to the erotic film Last Tango in Paris. In the end, Morse decides to watch it and see what the fuss is all about only to discover that it is no longer playing. Its replacement: 101 Dalmatians. Lewis, who'd driven Morse to the cinema, decides to go bring his family for a night out, leaving Morse standing in the street, disappointed and bewildered.
  • When Morse and Lewis are investigating a rave, Lewis grabs a random cap and starts bobbing along to the music, until Morse gives him a Death Glare and he stops.
• Genius Bonus: Not only is the theme music rhythmically based on the morse code for "Morse", but composer Barrington Pheloung liked to hide the killer's name in the incidental music as well. After this became well-known, he started mixing in red herrings.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Towards the end of the final episode, "The Remorseful Day", Inspector Morse dies of a heart attack after solving his last case. Fifteen months after the episode aired, John Thaw, who played Morse, passed away on 21 February 2002 in real life. Also, in fiction, the same fate would later befall another detective, thirteen years after Morse, in the final episode of Poirot.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Deadly Slumber" features Brian Cox as Michael Steppings, a self-made tycoon whose daughter was left braindead after a medical operation gone wrong, who is completely devoted to her care despite how hopeless her situation is and targets the surgeons who maimed her as revenge. Thirty years later, Cox would star in the series Succession as Logan Roy, a self-made tycoon whose regard for his kids is... not that great.
• It Was His Sled: Morse's first name is mentioned exactly once in the novels, in the second-to-last book Death is Now My Neighbour (it's also revealed - in different circumstances - in the TV adaptation of said book), after building up and dropping hints for a long time. Today it's widely known because it was mysterious for so long. Plus, the fact that it's used as the title of the prequel series, which is a bit of a giveaway.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • "Masonic Mysteries": Hugo De Vries is a suave, impeccably polite criminal mastermind and Master of Disguise, deservedly regarded as "one of greatest conmen of the age." Arrested by Morse twelve years previously for swindling Oxford University out of nearly one million pounds, De Vries returns seeking revenge, brainwashing one of his former victims into believing Morse framed him. Murdering Morse's new Love Interest Beryl Newsome, he carefully sets up events to implicate Morse for the crime even leading to his temporary arrest, as well as murdering Morse's mentor Desmond McNutt. Engaging in a series of psychological attacks and ordeals that leave Morse questioning his grip on reality, De Vries also hacks the Thames Valley computer servers to further incriminate him, made all the more impressive by doing so in a time when most officers didn't even know such a thing was possible. Even when caught by surprise, De Vries improvises a masterful monologue performance that successful fools Morse, enabling him to escape by stealing Lewis's car. Cultured, extremely charismatic and utterly ruthless, managing to constantly stay ten steps ahead of everyone, no other antagonist came as close to so completely defeating Morse as De Vries.
    Morse: Now you see him, now you don't. That's De Vries all right.
  • "Deadly Slumber": Michael Steppings is an amiable, approachable self-made tycoon out for revenge against the Brewster family, whose corruption left his daughter brain dead. Spending a year preparing an intricate plan, he carefully built a case of their malpractices, even breaking into the Brewster clinic to gather information. Having arranged events to seemingly give himself a cast-iron alibi, he murdered Doctor Matthew Brewster and then arranged his own arrest so that he would be cleared as a suspect; whilst also setting the scene to appear that the victim's son killed his father and tried to frame him, even subtly planting the idea in Morse's head. He then blackmailed him into confessing by threatening to expose his parent’s malpractices, so that Doctor Claire Brewster would know how it felt helplessly watching your child deprived of their life, something he considered "poetic justice". Ingenious and a masterful actor, Steppings was nevertheless a genuinely genial figure, with Morse himself admitting that if he was monstrous it was only because he was made to be.
• Memetic Mutation: (Pop culture version) It's now widely joked that Oxford is a deathtrap, especially for academics, thanks to the frequency of murders on the show. This is particularly true of the (thankfully) fictional Lonsdale College.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Service Of All The Dead". All of it.
  • Friday from "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is frightening in just how insane she is, to the point that she was willing to throw a baby off a balcony to its death.
  • John Peter Barrie from "The Day Of The Devil", a Satan-worshipping serial rapist and Master of Disguise, is by far one of the most disturbing and insane villains in the series.
  • "The Way Through The Woods" ends with Lewis being threatened by the killer with a shotgun and forced to dig his own grave, only for Morse to intervene and in the ensuing struggle the killer ends up blasting her own face open with the shotgun. Her reasoning for her killings also comes with a heavy dose of Squick too.
• Replacement Scrappy: Grayling Russell is sometimes seen as this for Max. While she isn't overwhelmingly hated by any means, she's definitely considered the least interesting of the show's three pathologists — though admittedly wasn't helped by just getting four episodes, whereas Max and Laura Hobson went on to get more development in Endeavour and Lewis respectively — and the sudden implication of a possible May–December Romance between her and Morse in "The Secret of Bay 5B" wasn't exactly well-received.
• Retroactive Recognition: Quite a few...
  • Elizabeth Hurley plays a schoolgirl in "Last Seen Wearing".
  • Marilla Cuthbert plays the mother of the titular murder victim in "Who Killed Harry Field?".
  • Victor Ignotas from "Twilight of the Gods" is played by John Bluthal, who would later be best known for playing Frank Pickle in The Vicar of Dibley.
  • Mrs. Kane from "Last Bus to Woodstock" is played by Shirley Stelfox, who would later be best known for playing the first Rose in Keeping Up Appearances and Edna Birch in Emmerdale.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Dead On Time" ends with the woman who was implied to be the love of Morse's life killing herself as part of a suicide pact with her terminally ill husband who she had previously helped to die.
  • The entirety of "Deadly Slumber", from the circumstances which led to Michael Steppings' motive for revenge, to his suicide and final message to Morse, and finally his beloved daughter, rendered braindead, finally being taken off life support.
  • "Thank Lewis for me..."

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