INSPECTOR MORSE (4 x DVD) SERIES TWO

INSPECTOR MORSE (4 x DVD) SERIES TWO -  JOHN THAW IN THE CLASSIC TELEVISION DRAMA

Erittäin hyväkuntoinenn DVD ja kotelo vuodelta 1987, kesto 411 minuuttia, kieli on englanti, tekstitys vain englanti. DVD-kotelon ja suojakotelon tekstit vain englanniksi.

John Thaw on nerokas mutta omaperäinen komisario Morse kriitikoiden ylistämässä, palkitussa ja valtavan suosion saavuttaneessa murhamysteerisarjassa.

THE WOLVERCOTE TONGUE - A tour group of geriatric Americans descend on the Randolph Hotel, including a lady who is about to donate a priceless artefact, the ‘Wolvercote Tongue’, to the Ashmolean Museum. When she is found dead shortly after arriving and the Tongue is missing from her hotel room Morse suspects foul play, despite the doctor’s insistence she died from natural causes. The chief suspect, Eddie Poindexter, the dead woman’s husband, soon goes missing and Morse and Lewis’ attention is diverted to Theodore Kemp, the colourful museum curator whose naked body is found floating in the River Cherwell the following evening. Morse is convinced he now has two murders on his hands, both connected to the theft, but his guesswork is mere speculation. Kemp’s disabled wife commits suicide after learning of his death and Morse finally stumbles into a fruitful line of inquiry by considering the movements of the other expert connected to the tour, Cedric Downes, and his wife, who Morse and Lewis happen to intercept as she makes her way to London with a suitcase. When they confront Downes on the platform of Oxford station later the same day, and his account of his awareness of Kemp’s death doesn’t match with his wife’s, he’s taken in for questioning. That’s not before he literally bumps into Poindexter, who coincidentally steps off a train as Downes attempts to make an escape.The confessions from Poindexter and Downes are forthcoming. Poindexter admits that his wife’s death, unsurprising given her heart condition, occurred in his presence and that he took the Tongue in order to throw it away and collect the insurance money. His disappearance was also for the purposes of connecting with his long lost daughter. Downes claims that Kemp’s death was an accident and occurred after a confrontation when he had returned home to collect his notes for his lecture, only to find his wife with Kemp in flagrante. With a little bending of the truth from Morse, he also admits to subsequently killing his wife while she was disposing of Kemp’s clothing in London. As the episode comes to a close the Wolvercote Tongue is retrieved from the river and Morse admits that, despite his prior insistence, there were two cases here rather than one; the original death was simply of natural causes and the subsequent murders were not related to the theft at all.

Based on an original story by Colin Dexter which he subsequently novelized as THE JEWEL THAT WAS OURS.

LAST SEEN WEARING -Valerie Craven, the daughter of a local building magnate, has been missing for six months and so an otherwise idle Morse is assigned the case. When a letter arrives, purportedly from the missing girl, with a London postmark, initial inquiries take Morse and Lewis in the direction of a man named Maguire, a one-time boyfriend of Valerie. Reckless guesswork from Morse surprisingly strikes home and it is established that the girl is or at least was pregnant. Further investigation centres on Valerie’s school and a head-strong headmaster, Donald Phillipson, and a former teacher now moved on, David Acum, are added to the suspect list. When the deputy head, Cheryl Baines, is found dead at her home both Lewis and Strange lash out at Morse, whose prior insistence that murder was involved now seems confirmed. Unexpectedly it is Phillipson’s wife, Sheila, who is identified by a neighbour as being present at the scene on the evening of Baine’s death and she is brought in for questioning. Insisting all she encountered at the home was a body, she tells Morse and Lewis that she saw Acum as she left, waiting in a car around the corner. Acum is therefore brought in for questioning but, after a couple of pints to aid his thinking of course, Morse seems content to let him go. He does, however, insist on driving Acum back to Reading and, when Acum claims his wife isn’t home, Morse gladly accepts the invitation to wait for her. Once inside Morse calls out for Valerie, and sure enough she emerges from upstairs, Morse having finally realised that he had already met Valerie when he had called at Acum’s house earlier on but did not initially recognise her as she was wearing a face pack at the time. Valerie returns to find her mother in a verbal altercation with Phillipson and his wife. Phillipson claims he and Grace Craven were having an affair and were together the night Baines died and yet despite initially confirming this to Morse, Craven now insists he is lying and that their affair ended months ago. Valerie corroborates this version of events, explaining that she saw Phillipson as she was leaving Baines’ house on the evening in question. Phillipson finally caves, admits to a struggle and her accidental death, and is taken into police custody as a result.

THE SETTLING OF THE SUN - While Morse pursues another romantic line of inquiry in the form of Dr Jane Robson, he finds himself on hand at an Oxford college when one of its foreign summer students is murdered. The Japanese man, Yukio Li, excused himself from dinner and is discovered in his room in a ritual pose with injuries to his hands and feet and a dagger in his chest. However, Max insists the cuts were to hide the fact that he’d previously been bound and gagged and that the lack of blood suggested the man had been dead for some time. After a cassette tape, in a jiffy bag addressed to Yukio and containing traces of cocaine, is found in the back of the coach, Robson confirms to Morse that he had been to the summer school previously and was a drug dealer. When another member of staff supporting the summer school, Graham Daniels, is found dead, Morse begins to suspect a wider plot and that perhaps his presence at the college dinner was contrived to give alibis to those present. As Morse’s suspicions grow, particularly towards Kurt Friedman, a german who another student claims is a ‘phoney’ and Sir Wilfred Mulryne, the don of the college, he is told to drop his investigation by Superintendent Dewar but this only strengthens Morse’s resolve to crack the case. Through further pestering of Dr Robson, and some theorising of his own, Morse finally establishes the truth. The death, or at least the kidnap and torture, of Yukio Li was planned by Dr Robson and her brother, the man pretending to be Kurt Friedman, as revenge for the torture of their father in Japan during WWII at the hands of Yukio’s father. Mulryne had disclosed this family connection to Dr Robson previously. But the plan went awry as the doppelgänger they used for the Japanese was overpowered by Yukio who in turn pretended to be the doppelgänger himself and escaped. The dead man initially found was therefore not Yukio Li after all. Yukio then used the cover of his ‘death’ to exact revenge himself on those complicit in the plot against him, starting with Daniels and then Michael Robson/Kurt Friedman, who is found dead in the showers. On seeing this, Morse immediately realises that Dr Robson is next and rushes to her aid, only to find that someone has rescued her already by bashing Yukio's head in with a croquet mallet after he had attempted to strangle her. Morse finds Mrs Warbut, of the college bursary office, in the church, who confesses to turning a blind eye to the plot, and who it is implied finally killed Yukio and saved Dr Robson. Warbut grew up in Japan and was scarred and embittered by the knowledge of what happened to Dr Robson’s father and many others during the war. 

LAST BUS TO WOODSTOCK - Morse and Lewis are called to a pub outside Oxford where a young woman named Sylvia King has been found dead in the car park, seemingly run over but with scratches on her face that suggest an attack. An envelope, containing what Morse identifies as a coded letter, is found in Sylvia’s purse that is addressed to her superior at work, Jennifer Coleby so inquiries begin at an Oxford assurance company. Morse quickly presumes the envelope contained wads of cash. Meanwhile the man Sylvia was due to meet for a date on the fateful evening begins to spend money in an extravagant fashion. He soon stumbles into trouble and is brought into the station, admitting he did take the money after discovering Sylvia and even her necklace but, despite this confession, Morse is unconvinced he could have killed her and lets him go. Instead, an elderly woman claims to have seen Sylvia get into a red car at a bus stop on the night in question, and after her memory is jogged, she even remembers the registration plate, which takes Morse and Lewis to the home of Mrs and Dr Crowther, the latter Morse has encountered already giving a lecture at an Oxford college. So while Sylvia hitching a lift with Crowther is established, the connection between her and Jennifer Coleby isn’t until Max, who happens to be related to the Crowthers, tells Morse that Sylvia was due to attend physio at the hospital the following day. The witness at the bus stop had reported that another person had been with Sylvia that night but didn’t get into the car. Instead Sylvia had departed with the words, “see you in the morning”. Morse and Lewis then realise that the mysterious other person at the bus stop was not a colleague of Sylvia’s but Jennifer Coleby’s lodger, Mary Widdowson, who works as a nurse at the hospital. By this time Crowther has had a heart attack whilst disposing of evidence from his car and so the episode climaxes at the hospital with Widdowson confessing to Morse what had really gone on: She and Crowther were engaged in an affair but with his potential appointment to a senior post at the University, Crowther wanted to give her money for a holiday so she would be out of the picture for a while. Hence the wads of cash (and the coded message, ‘please take it’) in an envelope that was to get to her via Coleby, only for Sylvia King to intercept it. When Sylvia was coincidentally picked up by Crowther at the bus stop, Mary Widdowson didn’t get in but instead followed them to see what would happen between them. When Sylvia gets out of the car, Mary confronts her and knocks her to the ground, only for Crowther to inadvertently run over her as he reverses out of the car park. So not murder after all, but Widdowson is led away by the police for her hand in Sylvia’s death as Crowther regains consciousness on his hospital bed.

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