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Hello everyone and welcome to a new post. Here is an article from January 26th1997 published in the New York Times an written by Mel Gussow. Enjoy.

Behind Morse, the Dour, Dignified Detective.

CHIEF Inspector Morse, the dour, dignified Thames Valley detective, is back in two new two-part adventures (beginning Thursday on Channel 13), and, as always, he is an intellectual with a taste for classical music and an impatience with standard police procedure. As played with quiet inscrutability by John Thaw, Morse — almost everyone calls him that, just Morse — looks and sounds much more like an Oxford don than a policeman on the trail of a murderer.

As created by the novelist Colin Dexter, ”Inspector Morse” has proved to be one of the most popular and durable of the British crime-solvers on the ”Mystery” series, with 30 episodes over a period of 10 years.

Recently, Mr. Thaw pondered the oddity of Morse. ”If you think about it,” he said, ”it’s unbelievable. A policeman driving a very nice old classic car, a red Jaguar, around Oxford, going into a pub and having a pint of beer when he feels like it. Oxford is having something like five murders a week. It’s a totally unreal fairyland, as opposed to the nitty-gritty police stuff. This is in the realm of Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie. It’s certainly not in the realm of ‘Prime Suspect’ or ‘N.Y.P.D.’ ”

Yet as written, and as played by Mr. Thaw, Morse comes across as the most credible of sleuths: people believe in him as if he were a real-life detective. As might be expected, there have been Morse tours of Oxford, not just to the inspector’s favorite pubs, but to sites of murders in the series.

As he spoke, Mr. Thaw was sitting in his trailer preparing to shoot a scene in Manzi’s Eel and Pieshop in the Islington section of London for his concurrent television series, ”Kavanagh Q.C.” That series, in which he plays a queen’s counsel, has not yet come to the United States.

Behind Morse and Kavanagh, there are more than three decades of stage acting for Mr. Thaw (in Shakespeare as well as Tom Stoppard and in the leading role in David Hare’s ”Absence of War” several seasons ago at the Royal National Theater). The actor also had a four-year stint on television in ”The Sweeney,” a tough, streetwise police series, the opposite of ”Morse.”

Over the years he has grown deeper into Morse, until now the two are inseparable. Increasingly, Mr. Dexter’s novels have come to accommodate the actor’s persona, beginning with his thatch of white hair and his blue eyes, which were not in the early books. There are other similarities: both the character and the actor have a natural reserve and both like classical music.

Mr. Thaw said the Oxford background was from Mr. Dexter’s direct experience: ”To Colin, Morse is a real person, a real policeman. He goes to the pubs that Colin goes to. If there is a Morse it is Colin Dexter. But now, of course, John Thaw has intruded.”

Because Mr. Dexter has written only 11 Morse novels, most of the episodes are original stories. For three years, no ”Morse” was made for television, but repeat showings made it seem as if the inspector were always in business. There is at least one more new episode to come after the current pair of stories, to be filmed later this year. That will be an adaptation of Mr. Dexter’s current novel.

The success of the show is partly due to the relationship between Morse and Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whately). One change is the growing, albeit grudging tolerance that Morse has for his loyal assistant. While viewers know that Lewis has an instinctive intelligence, Morse has kept him in his place. In the early episodes, Mr. Thaw said, ”Morse was much more condescending.” But in ”The Way Through the Woods,” the first of the new mysteries, he softens a bit.

After a long complex investigation, Lewis says, ”If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/and treat those two impostors just the same.” Morse identifies the source of the quotation: ”Kipling, Lewis.” Lewis answers, ”No, it’s written above the players’ entrance at Center Court” at Wimbledon. Mr. Thaw said the old Morse would have cut him off with, ”Don’t be stupid; that’s from Kipling.” Instead he says, ”So it is,” and pats Lewis on the shoulder. For Mr. Thaw, that is a sign of his growing respect for Lewis, although, as always, it is Lewis who pays for the beer when the two of them go to a pub.

Having worked together so long, the two actors are friendly and have a certain shorthand when acting. In common with his character, Mr. Whately is, Mr. Thaw said, ”a very likable, easygoing chap.”

Viewers may still wonder why Morse, with his educational and cultural background, became a policeman. Asked to explain that choice, Mr. Thaw said that Morse left Oxford before he got his degree because he was ”so upset and traumatized by a romance that didn’t work out.” Not long after that, he went into the army. When he was discharged, he was undecided about what to do and, in common with other veterans of his age, he joined the police force rather than becoming a private detective.

”A private eye in this country is concerned with divorces and industrial espionage,” the actor said. ”Murder, violence: that’s not the nature of the job. So by joining the police, he would see that darker side, which fascinates him at the same time it repels him.”

Asked about Morse’s moral code, he said: ”Here’s a man who continues doing this job for all the right reasons. He wants to punish evil, but he’s a scarred man, by what he’s seen, by what he knows.” Mr. Thaw has found the character to be a continuing challenge, because he is so unrevealing. ”His tragedy, I suppose, is that he has all these emotions like anybody else, maybe more than some people, but ultimately he can’t give himself.”

Just as Morse has taken on attributes of the actor, away from the show the actor has occasionally found himself reacting like the inspector. There have been several burglaries lately in the village where he lives and whenever one is reported, Mr. Thaw starts asking specific questions about time, place and weather: ”These are not questions the ordinary person would ask. I sound like a copper. I suppose it’s so ingrained in me.” Repeatedly he has been asked to address police conventions, invitations he has rejected. Morse would not go, and therefore neither would Mr. Thaw.

Until recently, one of the remaining secrets in the novels and the television adaptations was Morse’s first name. In Mr. Dexter’s latest book, it is revealed as Endeavour. ”Apparently it is an old Quaker name,” said Mr. Thaw, ”and we know that Morse’s parents were Quakers.” As it happens, Mr. Thaw’s wife, the actress, Sheila Hancock, is a Quaker, and he asked her to look up the name. Endeavour sounds like, and in fact was, a ship, Captain Cook’s boat. Morse’s father was a great Captain Cook enthusiast. ”That’s why Morse’s parents christened him Endeavour,” he said. ”Who am I to argue with Colin Dexter?”

Mr. Thaw said that he could not imagine Lewis coming up to Morse in a pub and saying, ”Hello, Endeavour.” He added playfully, ”Would Lewis say to Morse, ‘Would you Endeavour to buy me a drink after all these years?’ ”

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