"The most suspicious thing of all is an excellent alibi."
This is, as is almost too obvious to point out, the first episode not to be either based on a novel by Colin Dexter or later to be adapted into one- although Dexter, I see, co-wrote the script. And yet, despite the obvious observation that for once the story was fully new to me, it didn't feel obvious.
Mostly.
Because this episode was superb, but in a way I haven't really seen before in Inspector Morse. It was all about the dialogue- sparse, restrained, quietly and Englishly full of deep pain and anguish, almost Pinterian in its bleak economy of words. This style of dialogue allows clues to double wonderfully as character moments, such as the German student who looks uncannily like Bernard from Yes Minister remarking about how the war infected his childhood, and Jane telling poor Morse- spurned again- how she never fancied them.
The plot is clever, with its double drugs red herring, its Japanese doppelganger plot that is a sly comment on the racism of "they all look the same", its roots in Japanese atrocities in Singapore- to crucify a priest, and make the object of his faith be forever tied to unimaginable trauma is truly evil- which touch upon the theme of endless cycles of revenge, as old as Aeschylus. This is both a superb detective story and a profoundly meaningful drama.
And I must praise Thaw here, whose performance reaches new heights and who seems to relish the Pinterian dialogue. I'm hopeful that the series may still be worth watching once we (mostly) move away from the novels.
