The reproof in their eyes, and the camaraderie implicit in their silence, provide moral and sentimental satisfactions that outweigh the infelicities of plot. Lewis and Hathaway look on ruefully as murderers make what appear to be totally unnecessary confessions. Episodes open with cryptic, almost surreal montages that introduce characters and clues in the most confusing way possible. A visit is paid to a favorite “Morse” and “Lewis” location, an Oxford rowing club. Misty morning shots of the Oxford skyline punctuate sedate scenes of investigation in dreamy quadrangles and riverside cafes. Police work aside, the final season maintains the show’s crumpetlike pleasures and eccentric tics. “Sounds vague and nebulous to me,” Moody complains, to which Hathaway sensibly replies, “Well, this is Oxford, sir.”
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Another goes full metal Oxford, tying a series of murders to alchemy and the theories of the minor British novelist and theologian Charles Williams. One episode entwines taxidermy, the Victorian obsession with death, performance art and social psychology. Whately something to play besides crotchety but sneakily hip old age, and it livens up the mysteries, which are as hard to follow and as campily gothic as ever. Whether to Morse above or to Hathaway below, Lewis is always in the position of proving himself, and in the final season - with a new chief superintendent, Moody (Steve Toussaint), looking to cut costs - he finds himself staring at involuntary retirement, not at all happily. In “Lewis” the equation was cleverly reversed and he was the steadying influence on a hotheaded, cerebral sergeant, Hathaway (Laurence Fox). At first he was the working-class foil to the intellectual Morse. Through the two series (beginning in 1987), Lewis has been played by Kevin Whately as the guy you want sitting next to you at the pub, a no-nonsense cop who confronts murder with amiability, compassion and a touch of earnest exasperation. (PBS is calling it the eighth season, having combined some seasons along the way.) After 33 episodes of “Morse” and now 33 of “Lewis,” originally shown on the British network ITV (and based on characters created by the mystery novelist Colin Dexter), it’s surprising that there are any professors left to lecture or students left to take notes.
The ninth and final season of “Inspector Lewis,” three feature-length episodes beginning Sunday on PBS’s “Masterpiece Mystery!,” is filled with corpses, of course. Call that a spoiler, but if you’ve watched Morse’s onetime sergeant, Robbie Lewis, over his nearly 30 years on television, you know that he’d find being killed off far too immodest, too attention-grabbing a fate. When its spinoff “Inspector Lewis” ends in a few weeks, no one of importance will die.
When “Inspector Morse” ended - 15 years ago! - the Oxford detective Endeavour Morse keeled over in the middle of campus, his dramatic collapse and subsequent death the appropriate capstone for a series about a self-centered snob.
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