I love classic detective stories and greatly enjoy both the Poirot and Miss Marple television series. I heard a great deal about the "Inspector Morse" series and was really looking forward to watching it when I got the BritBox subscription on AmazonPrime. However, the series was a huge letdown and I gave it up midway through the fifth episode.
I haven't read the books by Colin Dexter and am unsure how faithfully the TV series represents the character of Morse. But in the series Morse is thoroughly unlikable, a drunkard and a relentless womanizer. Worse than that, he gets involved with multiple women who are suspects in the cases he is working on. That kind of thing would have been completely unacceptable even 50-60 years ago, and in real life any British police inspector discovered doing what Morse does would have quickly lost his job. The plots are convoluted, rushed and lack any likable characters (in contrast with the aforementioned Miss Marple and Poirot series). Morse himself certainly doesn't qualify as likable. The only reasonably sympathetic regular character is Lewis but his presence is not enough to save the show. Having the series set in Oxford and having it deal with the lives of Oxford academics and British aristocrats is not enough to make it sophisticated. Instead the series comes off as snobbish and pretentious, and already feels quite dated.
Finally, the series violates the cardinal rule of the mystery genre: at the end the "who done it" has to be explained, clearly, carefully and in detail. The "Morse" episodes consistently fail this principle. While the main culprit (or culprits) does get revealed, that always happens in a rushed way, often with Morse getting a sudden spark of inspiration from some offhand remark of Lewis. However, that's all that happens, and the details of who did what, why and which order are not given. With the plots being as confusing and convoluted as they are, the viewer is left in a dazed state after an episode is over, not really understanding what it was all about.
Overall, a hard pass.
I haven't read the books by Colin Dexter and am unsure how faithfully the TV series represents the character of Morse. But in the series Morse is thoroughly unlikable, a drunkard and a relentless womanizer. Worse than that, he gets involved with multiple women who are suspects in the cases he is working on. That kind of thing would have been completely unacceptable even 50-60 years ago, and in real life any British police inspector discovered doing what Morse does would have quickly lost his job. The plots are convoluted, rushed and lack any likable characters (in contrast with the aforementioned Miss Marple and Poirot series). Morse himself certainly doesn't qualify as likable. The only reasonably sympathetic regular character is Lewis but his presence is not enough to save the show. Having the series set in Oxford and having it deal with the lives of Oxford academics and British aristocrats is not enough to make it sophisticated. Instead the series comes off as snobbish and pretentious, and already feels quite dated.
Finally, the series violates the cardinal rule of the mystery genre: at the end the "who done it" has to be explained, clearly, carefully and in detail. The "Morse" episodes consistently fail this principle. While the main culprit (or culprits) does get revealed, that always happens in a rushed way, often with Morse getting a sudden spark of inspiration from some offhand remark of Lewis. However, that's all that happens, and the details of who did what, why and which order are not given. With the plots being as confusing and convoluted as they are, the viewer is left in a dazed state after an episode is over, not really understanding what it was all about.
Overall, a hard pass.