What happened to you, "Colin Dexter"?
You used to write "Inspector Morse", which made Art of a TV series. It's impossible to summarize its merits in a couple sentences, and yet it'd be necessary to understand why Lewis is so disappointing.
Suffice to say all manipulative popular culture like TV series has its way of making us "quickly empathize with the characters, then go through some sort of prefabricated 'catharsis' through chases, dramatized situations, personal (love) interests, etc". Whereas in Morse all the "underpinnigs" of it remain secret most of the time, Lewis is all about artifice. It's like this often misquoted Hegel dictum that "history repeats itself, only in the form of farce" that I can understand Lewis. Morse is a philosophical inquiry taking place at a nostalgic Oxford. Lewis is... a bad police show.
Every 5' a new suspect pops up, all your certainties vanish, you're supposed to feel an "aha!" moment, but wait, the plot has to plod through another 90' until the most shameful psychoanalytical ripoff comes out.
Morale? Avoid like the plague. Good for laughs. Well, not even that!
PS: The Eastern Europe prostitute "Marina" dresses and walks too well to work waiting tables at a local pub. It just adds another tinge of oddity to the story.
You used to write "Inspector Morse", which made Art of a TV series. It's impossible to summarize its merits in a couple sentences, and yet it'd be necessary to understand why Lewis is so disappointing.
Suffice to say all manipulative popular culture like TV series has its way of making us "quickly empathize with the characters, then go through some sort of prefabricated 'catharsis' through chases, dramatized situations, personal (love) interests, etc". Whereas in Morse all the "underpinnigs" of it remain secret most of the time, Lewis is all about artifice. It's like this often misquoted Hegel dictum that "history repeats itself, only in the form of farce" that I can understand Lewis. Morse is a philosophical inquiry taking place at a nostalgic Oxford. Lewis is... a bad police show.
Every 5' a new suspect pops up, all your certainties vanish, you're supposed to feel an "aha!" moment, but wait, the plot has to plod through another 90' until the most shameful psychoanalytical ripoff comes out.
Morale? Avoid like the plague. Good for laughs. Well, not even that!
PS: The Eastern Europe prostitute "Marina" dresses and walks too well to work waiting tables at a local pub. It just adds another tinge of oddity to the story.