Barrington Pheloung’s introductory theme music was a splendid opening, with its fusion of a fine melody with the “da-ditty-da” rhythm of the Morse code. (Incidentally, it was later put to words and appeared on the pop charts.) It was not, as some have supposed, a clever, surely too clever, means of tapping out the letters of the crook’s name. It was, quite simply, a poignant, haunting motif that set exactly the right tone and mood for the series. After the individual episodes developed, music became integral to the moods, actions, and meanings of the scenes being portrayed. Let me give some illustrations of how it all worked, for which we owe everything to Barrington.
My own musical loves have centered predominantly on the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially Wagner (of course!), Bruckner, Mahler, and (later) Richard Strauss. Fairly obviously, the musical tastes of Morse mirrored my own. And, being mentioned frequently in the novels, they had some influence on many of the musical extracts used by Barrington, as did the favorites of Kenny McBain, particularly in the latter case Mozart’s clarinet compositions. Which illustrations do I particularly remember? Vivaldi’s Gloria at the beginning of the first TV program, “The Dead of Jericho”; Callas singing Tosca in “The Ghost in the Machine”; Ella Fitzgerald’s voice in “Driven to Distraction”; Mozart’s The Magic Flute (passim) in “Masonic Mysteries”; the Schubert Quintet in C in “Dead on Time”; the Immolation Scene from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung in “Twilight of the Gods”; and the prelude to Wagner’s Parsifal in “The Remorseful Day.” I could go on and on… And I will do a little, since I should not forget Barrington 's catchy composition “Truckin’ till I’m Dead” in “The Promised Land”; nor his original rave music in “Cherubim and Seraphim.”
If, as is often claimed, music is more able than other arts to give expression and form to our innermost feelings, let me single out the two examples I found most memorable of all. First, the ethereal extract from the finale of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in “Promised Land,” when Morse mounts the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Does opera ever rise above such glorious heights? Second, the extraordinarily moving “In Paradisum” from Fauré’s Requiem in “The Remorseful Day,” which includes the wonderful words “et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, aeternam habeas requiem” (“and with Lazarus, once a poor man, you may have eternal rest”). Inspector Morse would have opted for it at his funeral, as I shall at mine.
Did you have any discipline about the times you set aside for writing?
No.
Why did you kill off Morse?
I didn’t. He died of natural causes-a virtually inevitable consequence of a lifetime spent with “cigarettes and whiskey,” though not with “wild, wild women.” The cigarettes were always a problem, and Morse gave them up on innumerable occasions-usually every day. Alcohol, however, was a different matter, with real ale and single-malt scotch his favored tipples. Frequently, with Lewis, he sought to perpetuate the claim that he needed to drink in order to think, and indeed there was clearly some justification for such a claim. Whiskey, if drunk copiously, may have at least three possible effects: the legs may buckle, the speech become blurred, the brain befuddled. But Morse had no trouble with this last effect. His brain was sharper than ever, his imagination bolder, even his deep pessimism concerning the future of the planet a fraction modified. A longer-term effect was that his health grew worse, and he knew the score as well as any of the medical consultants whom he steadfastly refused to visit.
But there were, if I am honest, several other reasons why I decided to end the Morse era. First, it is my opinion that few crime writers manage to sustain their previously high level of output as they get older, and I had neither the ambition nor the need to try to join that select few. Second, my health was not robust, and it becomes progressively worse now. Third, I felt that I had said enough about the relationship between Morse and Lewis, and I realized that the repeated exemplifications of Morse’s character traits were becoming somewhat cliché ridden, with a good deal of the original freshness lost. Finally, I realized that I hadn’t many (any?) further plots left in my head to construct and develop. All right, we could have had a gentle ending, with Morse at last realizing his dreams of fair women, getting wed, and living happily ever after. But even my great hero Chandler made a sad mistake, in Playback, in my opinion, when providing a regular nuptial bed and a beautiful lady for Philip Marlowe.
You wrote only thirteen full-length Morse novels. How come there were thirty-three television episodes?
The Morse short stories I had written were too insubstantial for any two-hour treatment. After the novels were exhausted, I was asked by Kenny McBain if I could come up with four new plot outlines for the subsequent year’s quartet. I should have said no, since I was still a greenhorn in this TV business and had little idea what such a task would entail.
I wrote two excessively lengthy “outlines,” for “The Ghost in the Machine” and “Deceived by Flight,” both over sixty pages, as I recall. I then struggled through a third-and gave up on the fourth, realizing at last that my brain was quite unable to cope with such an assignment. From that point, screenplay writers were invited not just to adapt something I had written, but to produce original scripts. There were two dangers in this.
First, that new writers might not be fully aware of the firm characterization already established for both Morse and Lewis. Second, that perhaps some writers might think it appropriate, knowing the two characters well, to develop them according to their own lights and likings. For one or the other of these reasons, several promising stories could not be accepted. And since the copyright for Morse (and indeed for Lewis) remains and will remain with me, my role developed into that of an amateur consultant, occasionally with the directors but usually with the producers, especially Chris Burt. I hope and believe that such consultations and suggested revisions were of value.
What notice do you take of the critics?
One or two novelists I know would have no hesitation in answering, “No notice whatsoever, since I never read them.” I respect their independence of spirit, but I am not among them. When in the early days I got a mention anywhere, I eagerly sought out the review, and I felt deep satisfaction if it was even mildly commendatory, begging Macmillan to send me photocopies of similar mentions in their files. My style, I soon learned, was “mandarin” and “labyrinthine,” and although not quite sure of the significance of either epithet, I rather enjoyed them both. “Alas, the style… ” were the first three words of a shortish review once in The Times, and I read no more. I had a mixed bag of reviews from the pens of some distinguished critics, including A. N. Wilson, a writer I (once!) admired, who told his readers that he just could not read my pages. I was tempted to get my own back at him by never reading any more of his pages. On the other hand, I well remember treasuring (forgive me!) the judgment of Marcel Berlins, UK’s most respected crime critic, who wrote that Morse was now “a giant among fictional detectives.”
I wrote to only two reviewers. One was a local woman, herself an embryonic crime writer, I believe, who accused me (or was it Morse?) of being a “breast fetishist” in The Way Through the Woods. Although I could see little reason for being ashamed of such an interest in the female form, I did look quickly through the novel, finding only “… and Morse glanced appreciatively at the décolletage of her black dress as she bent forward with the wine list.”