Customer Reviews

Inspector Morse: Last Seen Wearing [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

LAST SEEN WEARING was one of the first dramatizations of the BBC/PBS series of 33 episodes based on the character of Endeavor Morse, Detective Chief Inspector of the Thames Valley Police Department--serving the city of Oxford in England. LSW is actually based on one of the 13 books Dexter wrote, and contains a clever and complex plot. I think I'm fairly intelligent, and I read many mysteries, but I will say, I was baffled by this story. I read the book first, and recommend you do too.

The storyline is this--a young girl who is a day student at a private girl's school fails to come home one day. The police are called in to find the girl. Six months later, the girl is still missing and Morse is put on the case. He tells Sargeant Lewis, "She's dead." "Why do you say that Sir?" says Lewis. Morse replies, "Because I'm the three-file man. They bring me in when there are three files, and when there are three files, someone's gone missing too long." So the first mystery is this, is the girl alive as Lewis says, or is she dead as Morse insists??

If she is dead, who killed her? The headmaster of the school has been behaving suspiciously. His wife thinks his actions are odd. The assistant head mistress seems to have some knowledge she is keeping under wraps. And then there's the father who has access to all sorts of earth-moving equipment--and he's her stepfather after all and a wealthy one at that. On the other hand, one of the male instructors quit quite recently, around the time when the young girl disappeared. He moved onto a lower paying job in another school. Why would he do that?

For regular fans of BBC/PBS drama and comedy, the cast is filled with many familiar faces. Julia Sawhalia ("Absolutely Fabulous" and "Pride and Prejudice") and Hugh Grant's old girl friend (Estee Lauder model) play students. "As Time Goes By" fans will recognize the actor who plays Alistair. In LSW he plays the young male teacher who recently vacated his job at the private school where the female student disappeared.

The DVD is excellent. The shots of the English countryside are wonderful. The crisp clear photography reveals the black circles under Morse's eyes (he has a little alcohol problem) as well as the 20 layers of dirty green paint on the long corridor in the old police headquarters building. This is vintage stuff.

I am sure that many of the Ispector's fans waited impatiently for the series to be released on DVD. I made a fatal mistake of selling my VHS collection.
Beware! This transfer is a disaster!
Conclusion: Stick to your VHS for now!
Note: same thing with Brother Cadfael DVDs. Is it the London fog or what?

If you own this episode on VHS there is no reason to purchase the DVD version. I am a big Inspector Morse fan and find this to be one of the better episodes but the DVD itself is horrible.
I cannot believe how a show as popular as Inspector Morse can be turned into such a shoddy DVD. The DVD contains no extras (although some newer episodes do contain laughable text trivia, ha!) The transfer is mediocre at best, and lastly the packaging is cheap. I recently purchased "Brideshead Revisited" on DVD, wonderful transfer, wonferful packaging, many extras including a booklet. Is it really too much to ask that the series be treated with a little respect, how about some extras behind the scenes footage? a director or author voice over? maybe an interview with some of the surviving cast? Its just dreadful in every respect. I can only hope the series is issued again by a company with more taste.

What I particularly enjoyed about LAST SEEN WEARING is the character study of Endeavor Morse, Detective Chief Inspector of the Thames Valley Police Department, serving Oxford.

In the opening scene, Morse is reading Thomas Hardy, one of the brooding classics of English Literature. But construction noise (by a firm that later turns out to be tied into the case) disturbs him and he goes into work--where he continues to read Hardy, and ignore the files that his eager Seargant attempts to thrust into his face.

The pathologist, in trying to get Morse to feel the pain of the parents' loss of their daughter says, "Imagine that your copy of the Ring Cycle [Wagner's interminable opera] was destroyed and it was your only one." Yes, as the editorial review says, the "cultured curmudgeon." I love it!

Morse's lined face, slight paunch, in-need-of-a-haircut and always in need of a drink gives us a completely different portrait than, say, the dapper Poirot. When Morse confronts the contractor, the man says, "Oh no, are you the one who drinks?" Morese doesn't miss a beat to confirm or deny, but simply says, "Are you the tyrant?"

His boss asks Morse if this flu of his is really a depression. Though Morse denies it, this seems likely. He seems burnt out, and doesn't really snap to in the case until a real body is found to galvanize his attention.

The story is amazing in crime literature in that it has a happy ending of sorts!

--Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

Detective Chief Inspector Morse is a self assured intelligent man with little respect and patience for people with lesser intelligence, or with ideas with which he disagrees. He reads good literature and listens to good music; Thomas Hardy and Wagner in this BBC film. He drinks too much, usually two pints of "bitters" at a time. When told by his Superintendant not to do something, he does it before anything else. The Superintendant is usually angry at him - for failing to obey his orders and for asking for some scotch at a murder scene in this case - but he still relies on him for complicated cases because of his successes. Yet despite his abilities and his ultimate successes, he generally gets matters wrong the first, second, and third time, before getting it right. These matters include misreading the people and developing a wrong case theory.

In this case, the daughter of a wealthy well-placed man disappears. Morse is handed the case after six months. He insists that the girl is dead, but since the police recently received a letter allegedly written by her, everyone else thinks she is still alive. Morse uncovers lots of information about the girl's family, her school, its teachers, and the teachers' families, and he tries a trick that results in a person's death.

A teenager has gone missing - Morse believes she is dead - Lewis believes she is alive. The plot builds from there with a woman, other then the teenager being murdered. The involvement of a girl's school leads us to various behavioral patterns, heterosexuality, bi-sexuality, homosexuality all adding to most interesting plot lines, and confusing Morse no end. Additional complications are introduced with Catholicism and abortion. Not much opera here - our only compensations are some chamber music which Morse is relaxing to while reading Thomas Hardy at the very beginning of the story and an orchestral excerpt from Die Walküre just prior to the ME Max's excellent analogy he poses to Morse. While both are sipping a pint at a local pub Max asks Morse if he understands what it would be like to lose a child, when Morse answers no, Max suggests he grasp the situation by envisioning he (Morse) cannot find his copy of "The Ring". Morse's reply will be found in the video. There is very little icing aside from brief exchanges relative to flowers and first editions. A fine plot carries this episode despite the lack of topping which we have come to expect.

This is the first Morse story that I can actually remember seeing and as with all of the others it is a good story well worth watching. I would say that even a person who doesn't think they'd like an English murder mystery should try it. I would never have recognized Elizabeth Hurley in an early role as a school girl, Julia Sawalha(also present) was more appealing to me.

This is one of my favorite Morse mysteries. In Last Seen Wearing, a teenage student at an elite prep school has been missing for the past several months. The case finally lands in Morse's lap, and he confidently tells Lewis that the girl is dead. Lewis refuses to accept this, and eventually Morse gets on board and the duo start investigating. Everything points to the girl's school, and the list of suspects is long. The headmaster appears to be hiding something; the deputy head (a woman with lesbian tendencies) seems to know something but refuses to divulge any information; the male French teacher has upped and left, transferring to another school; and then there's the girl's stepfather, a powerful businessman who may or may not have something to hide.

I like how Morse conducts his interviews as they are done in a such a manner as to be considered thinly-veiled interrogations, and often putting the interviewee at an awkward disadvantage. There are some familiar faces in this episode - a very young Elizabeth Hurley who plays a student at the school, and also Julia Sawalha (from Pride and Prejudice (Restored Edition) and also Lark Rise to Candleford: Complete Collection. Lewis' role is more of a hands-on, dig in the dirt kind in that he spends much of his time roaming around trying to piece the other pieces of the puzzle. Together, Morse and Lewis make a formidable team indeed.

Here is the episode listing for the Inspector Morse series:
First Series (1987)
The Dead of Jericho
The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn
Service of All the Dead

Second Series (1988)
The Wolvercote Tongue
Last Seen Wearing
The Settling of the Sun
Last Bus to Woodstock

Third Series (1989)
Ghost in the Machine
The Last Enemy
Deceived by Flight
The Secret of Bay 5B

Fourth Series (1990)
The Infernal Serpent
The Sins of the Fathers
Driven to Distraction
Masonic Mysteries

Fifth Series (1991)
Second Time Around
Fat Chance
Who Killed Harry Field?
Greeks Bearing Gifts
Promised Land

Sixth Series (1992)
Dead on Time
Happy Families
The Death of the Self
Absolute Conviction
Cherubim and Seraphim

Seventh Series (1993)
Deadly Slumber
The Day of the Devil
Twilight of the Gods

Specials 1995-2000
The Way through the Woods
The Daughters of Cain
Death is Now My Neighbour
The Wench Is Dead
The Remorseful Day

In "Last Seen Wearing" (1988) Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse and his minion, Sergeant Lewis, are assigned to a missing person case. A teenage schoolgirl, Valerie, a day student, has been missing for months from an exclusive private school. Morse says immediately without doubt that she is dead. Lewis who has two daughters says he thinks not, but Morse is positive. If you've watched Morse working cases before, you know, brilliant though he is, he often goes off half-cocked. The father is a tyrannical millionaire-builder who treats Morse with complete disdain. A letter has been received from the girl saying she is all right, but Morse thinks that someone has doctored one of the girl's old letters.
The girl's teachers and the young egocentric headmaster of the school become suspects. Without any evidence Morse says that when the girl disappeared, she was pregnant. It's another of his wild guesses.
Morse tools around in his red Jag interrogating suspects. Actor John Thaw does a good job of portraying the prickly inspector, and Lewis is interpreted with great skill by Kevin Whately. Elizabeth Hurley also appears in this episode.
This TV film is much better than "Deadly Slumber" because it's actually based on a Dexter novel rather than just the character of Morse. The story is richer; it has touches of humor; the characterizations are much deeper; and the often comic by-play between Morse and Lewis is far better delineated. Morse's conflicts with Superintendent Strange and even with pathologist Max are very well done.
Morse is fond of Classical music especially Wagner's ring cycle, crossword puzzles, and he enjoys reading Thomas Hardy. He enjoys his pints in pubs but can get livid when time is called when he hasn't had his ration. Morse in a pub gets another pint and rationalizes it by saying, "When I'm thinking, I get thirsty." He also says to his sergeant, "You're such a prude, Lewis."
Valerie was a wild girl who turns out to have had an affair. Morse, in order "to make things happen" goes over the line and breaks the law more than once even resorting to forgery. Morse uses lateral thinking ("I can't think in straight lines.") which often proves wrong.
One of the suspects is murdered, and Lewis blows up at his boss and says, "You were so keen to have a murder."
After his usual false starts, Morse is able to eke out a solution, but we have great fun on the journey.

with a funky complexion, thick eyebrows, & thicker ankles! This your usual Inspector Morse mystery. He's grumpy, and always ready to have a good pint of Real Ale, and ready to have his sergeant pay for that pint. The real surprise here was seeing Hurley. She probably doesn't want this seen, but hey, a cygnet becomes a swan, right?