Apollo

I hope that Morse and Thursday don't have to fight against Box every moment of every new episode. They are wise and can make him look good. He is a total ass who must have had some result somewhere, sometime, to get where he is. A promising physicist dies with his girlfriend in what appears to be a high speed car accident. The evidence, however, begins to show something suspicious about the crash. Also, there are people who are running around, frightened to death, over discovery of some secret, some relationships. Perhaps there are coincidences, but they play out so well. By the way, I was a kid when they were on and I hated that Thuderbird show. Still, the recreation of those puppets was astonishing.

Very hard to follow. Probably very ingenious but I wish they'd keep it a bit simpler -too many characters and confusing storyline 'whose csr/whose keys and oh wait- it was only half of the car! Needed to watch it twice and occasionally gowing back to recap.

The Second episode picks up with Morse now transferred, and under the control of Thursday's boss 'Box,' I admit my heart sinks each time I see poor Fred given an order by his cocky, glory hunting new boss. It's so hard getting used to seeing the show favourites in these new positions, the cosy feel we got previously is now gone, even Bright is now a figure of fun. Change was always inevitable though for Morse, and he still finds a chance to work with his old Governor to solve a bizarre car crash.

I really enjoyed the mystery itself, it was a good old fashioned murder mystery, who and why. Best element for me, had to be Moon Rangers, the Thunderbirdsesque style show, which looked amazing, truly impressive sequences, huge credit to the designers, actors etc, a really impressive setup.

The script was a triumph, the performances also were superb, Mark Stockley and Blake Ritson in particular stood out.

Excellent once again. 9/10

I see that whoever is writing the script for the series now has spent way too much time under the influence of American TV series. This was a great series filled with compassionate people and well written scripts. Now it's butchered with backstabbing, double crossing sniveling people. Why in the world would you think this is what people want to see??? Give me old series!

I'll agree with reviewer Paul Scales on this. It is too complicated.

But I'd go further. The whole thing seems to be based on a rather implausible series of events relating to the history of the car central to the story going back several years. Anybody who has watched detective shows will have heard someone at one point say something like "I don't believe in coincidences". Well, nobody says that in this episode but they wouldn't dare as the entire complicated chained plot line is based on one coincidence after the other with much of that not being revealed until the end. The Eddy Nero connection with the car towards the end (glossed over really quickly) was the final straw as far as I was concerned.

My wife and I discussed this episode after viewing it and even the following day after reflecting on it a bit and decided in the end that, really, much of this simply doesn't make a lot of sense.

Just one example: at one point DCI Box tells Morse and Thursday to "leave it to me" and clearly removes them from any more involvement in the case. And yet in the next scene, there the two of them are still conducting inquiries. We though, "gee, they're really going to be in trouble when Box finds out" Yet a few scenes later it seems that Box has absolutely no problem with Morse and Thursday are still investigating and implicitly they have his approval.

Time and time again Box tells Morse to keep out of it. Time and time again Morse ignores him. In any real life situation, Morse would have been dismissed, transferred or up on disciplinary charges for the way he was ignoring explicit orders. But not in Oxford.

As to the use of coincidences.... last week we had the implausible coincidence of Morse stumbling across the bodies of not one but two missing people in two quite different places. A little far fetched perhaps?

Sorry, but this is one of the poorest episodes in my recollection.

As always, well acted but the writers need to up their game and not just coast on acting and directing alone.