Struggling artist Harry Field is found murdered and thrown off an overpass but recent rains and a dry body lead Morse to conclude he was killed over a week earlier.Struggling artist Harry Field is found murdered and thrown off an overpass but recent rains and a dry body lead Morse to conclude he was killed over a week earlier.Struggling artist Harry Field is found murdered and thrown off an overpass but recent rains and a dry body lead Morse to conclude he was killed over a week earlier.
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaMorse paraphrases Tolkien by saying near the end: "The road goes on and on, let others follow it who can."
- Quotes
Chief Superintendent Strange: [Referring to Eirl] We've got a very important corpse on our hands.
Chief Inspector Morse: Yes, I preferred him as a suspect.
- ConnectionsFeatures The Driver (1978)
- SoundtracksAin't Misbehavin'
(uncredited)
Music by Fats Waller (as 'Thomas "Fats' Waller) and Harry Brooks (1929)
Harry Field listens to Waller recording in his studio
Featured review
My Favorite Morse
This is the first - and only - episode of the Morse series I'll comment upon, as it is easily my favorite. I rarely watched them when they first appeared here, and only after enjoying for years the Inspector Lewis corpus first, and then Endeavor through seven seasons so far, did I ever go back, find the old dvd's, and re-watch all the Morses, more than once now, too.
In this episode, the murders themselves are secondary - in fact the second one almost ignored - as it is the wonderfully bittersweet mood of this most observant and life-wearily intelligent episode that matters, often filmed late in the day in setting sun and fading light. I think this kind of sad sagacity and introspection is only reached, and perhaps only appreciated, later in life, as I am reaching now. I doubt I'd have been as profoundly struck by the melancholy feel of this episode had I watched it on its first appearance years ago.
Harry Field, the original victim, is barely seen alive in this, yet his rather raffish life is revealed in retrospect, peeled away in layers, as an art restorer such as he had been would do, revealing flaws as well as attributes. He slowly appears as a man who, failing professionally but beloved by many, we wish we could have known, just as we wish we could have had a pint in those peaceful country pubs shown here (and we get a rare inside view of Brocket Hall, a country house owned by two Victorian prime ministers, Lords Melbourne and Palmerston, a nice little bonus). There is a massive sense of loss in this episode, hanging over everything.
The acting is always impeccable, and Morse actually laughs at something funny, the delightful faux family crest mottoes for gullible Americans that Harry Field had cooked up, like the one when translated goes: "At Night, Put the Cat Out". Guest performers are memorable, with Geraldine James's angry grief quite profound, and Freddie Jones, the deceased's father, giving a spectacular diatribe on fraud and fakery in Art while standing in the Ashmolean Museum. So intense was this that I'd not noticed at first, had a previous reviewer not alerted us, that in the background the show's director delightfully rotates five different works of art hung behind him between takes while he never moves - the vagaries and shifting reality of Art and forgery going on right behind, and before us, even as it's being explained... what is real, and what is not? We only see what we are meant to see.
It is not even explicitly explained to us who the second murderer is, although it's fairly clear to me. As Harry's father says himself about his son's suspected murderer - "he MUST have done it." Or did he? The vagaries of art, and life. A supremely impressive, and memorable episode, one that in its own thoughtful way celebrates past lives both real and imagined, and by far my favorite of the lot.
In this episode, the murders themselves are secondary - in fact the second one almost ignored - as it is the wonderfully bittersweet mood of this most observant and life-wearily intelligent episode that matters, often filmed late in the day in setting sun and fading light. I think this kind of sad sagacity and introspection is only reached, and perhaps only appreciated, later in life, as I am reaching now. I doubt I'd have been as profoundly struck by the melancholy feel of this episode had I watched it on its first appearance years ago.
Harry Field, the original victim, is barely seen alive in this, yet his rather raffish life is revealed in retrospect, peeled away in layers, as an art restorer such as he had been would do, revealing flaws as well as attributes. He slowly appears as a man who, failing professionally but beloved by many, we wish we could have known, just as we wish we could have had a pint in those peaceful country pubs shown here (and we get a rare inside view of Brocket Hall, a country house owned by two Victorian prime ministers, Lords Melbourne and Palmerston, a nice little bonus). There is a massive sense of loss in this episode, hanging over everything.
The acting is always impeccable, and Morse actually laughs at something funny, the delightful faux family crest mottoes for gullible Americans that Harry Field had cooked up, like the one when translated goes: "At Night, Put the Cat Out". Guest performers are memorable, with Geraldine James's angry grief quite profound, and Freddie Jones, the deceased's father, giving a spectacular diatribe on fraud and fakery in Art while standing in the Ashmolean Museum. So intense was this that I'd not noticed at first, had a previous reviewer not alerted us, that in the background the show's director delightfully rotates five different works of art hung behind him between takes while he never moves - the vagaries and shifting reality of Art and forgery going on right behind, and before us, even as it's being explained... what is real, and what is not? We only see what we are meant to see.
It is not even explicitly explained to us who the second murderer is, although it's fairly clear to me. As Harry's father says himself about his son's suspected murderer - "he MUST have done it." Or did he? The vagaries of art, and life. A supremely impressive, and memorable episode, one that in its own thoughtful way celebrates past lives both real and imagined, and by far my favorite of the lot.
helpful•112
- dmc-74890
- Jun 10, 2021
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- The Crooked Chimney pub, Cromer Hyde, Lemsford, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, UK(pub where Morse finds Harry Field's motorbike)
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