Inspector Morse was created by Colin Dexter in a series of contemporary crime novels set in and around Oxford. Like many other fictional detectives, Morse is something of a loner, and his relationship with his sidekick Sergeant Lewis, though friendly, rarely extends to explaining all his thoughts.
A Perpetual Outsider
Inspector Morse’s name immediately associates him with codes and the interpreting hidden meanings – an appropriate implication considering he spends his time solving murders. He also has an obsession with cryptic crossword puzzles, which provide plenty of plot devices and analogies for his cases.
Morse is himself a rather an enigma, too. He never uses his first name, preferring to be known only as “Morse”, indeed it was not until near the end of the detective’s career that Dexter revealed that the “E” in his initials stood for “Endeavour.” He is isolated from his colleagues by his aloof habits, and his taste for high culture, particularly opera. Dexter’s work shows a familiarity with English Renaissance literature – for example, his novel entitled The Wench Is Dead, part o a quotation from Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.
Many of his cases bring Morse into contact with the world of Oxford University and its dons, a world in which Morse might find himself at home intellectually, but only ever enters because it has been disturbed by violence. This reinforces his isolation, caught between the communities of “town” and “gown.”
John Thaw
Inspector Morse became a household name after the TV series based on Dexter’s novels became a hit. John Thaw (previously famous for, amongst other roles, playing Detective Inspector Regan in The Sweeney) made Morse an instantly recognisable icon – behind the wheel of his red vintage Jaguar, sitting in a pub with a pint of real ale in his hand (for which he always managed to make Lewis pay), or lying back thinking to an opera soundtrack.
The series eventually moved away from adapting the novels to original scripts based on Dexter’s characters, though the influence worked both ways – the novels which Dexter wrote about Morse after John Thaw had begun to play the role show a definite shift towards Thaw’s version of the character. Morse became quite a fixture in Oxford (a city not short of a few literary characters to call its own), and many of the pubs in the environs have stills from the series, or can boast an episode in which Morse and Lewis took some ale in their establishment. The Randolph Hotel even has an entire bar devoted to John Thaw.
