"Is sex more trouble than it's worth?"
This is another solid episode, with a fairly impressive cast, with a couple of twists at the end> John Thaw, as ever, is superb. But this- based, I believe, on what was Colin Dexter's very first novel in 1975, although updated to not use the phrase "swinging set" or, indeed, the distasteful subplot of John's perviness- doesn't really stand out as an episode.
It's much toned down from the rather edgy novel. Neither of the Crowthers die, and Mary doesn't deliberately murder Sylvia. It leads to a far more sedate experience which shows, more than most episodes, how much has been changed from the rather dark and sexually sleazy early novels. Instead, we have an innocent female student of English Literature who gets #MeToo'd, in a very 1988 way, by a creepd don who faces no consequences, and blames herself, and also gets to talk to Morse about Spenser and the naughty Earl of Rochester.
It's good. I enjoyed it. But this is not, I think, an episode that will linger in the memory.
Incidentally, I'm 44 and don't instinctively think of 1988 as being particularly long ago. I have memories from 1988. It feels modern and contemporary. Yet this is a world of office desks without PC's, of men routinely wearing suits in offices, of calling colleagues "Mr" and "Miss" at work, and of typists. When I started in the Civil Service in 2003, it was literally the Monday after typists had ceased to be a thing...
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