Morse may be finished, but the ghost of John Thaw will always hang over actor Kevin Whately.
He doesn’t mind one bit. In truth Kevin, now 55 years old, didn’t want to return to playing Inspector Robbie Lewis after the death of his close friend Thaw in 2002. And when he talks about him you can see why. We met Kevin to discuss the Morse "phenomenon".
The latest three-part series of Lewis was filmed in autumn 2006 in Oxford, allowing Kevin to revisit some of his favourite haunts.
“Memories of John flood back all the time, every time you go into a college quadrangle," he said.
“We were in Exeter quad for the new series of Lewis, that’s the place where Morse collapsed with his heart attack. You remember that - but I’m not aware of John peering over my shoulder. It’s not like that.
“Half-a-dozen of the crew are old Morse crew and we talk about John a lot.”
Kevin got used to watching John Thaw drive the story and Inspector Morse along. So what made John so special?
“I’m not doing myself down, but John had an extra gear in his voice. He could go on the attack. No one really noticed it because he was such a fine actor. He could steam into someone and reduce them to wreckage in a single sentence.
“When we made Morse, John did all the work. I was reticent about returning to doing Lewis after John died because John carried every two-hour drama himself. Lewis was always the sounding board, the everyman character.
“It’s hard to make a character like Lewis carry two hours of prime-time telly. But my wife said, ‘You’ll have to drive the whole thing so it will be like doing a different job, you should do it.’”
Morse may be gone but he’s not forgotten.
“We can’t ignore the Morse character and it needs to be mentioned every now and then in Lewis," Kevin said.
“Lewis will gradually develop, like Morse did 20 years ago. I’ll be interested to see all that myself."
Kevin Whately has never been a fan of whodunits. That’s a strange thing for an actor who has appeared in 33 Morse episodes since 1986.
For Kevin, Morse has never just been about catching criminals.
“I like to be bemused by things that have more to them than meets the eye," he said. “We’ve always, on Morse and now Lewis, thought of our storylines less as whodunits and more as ways of looking at the human condition.”
