Special Feature: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 2 Part 2

The Oxford University of ITV/PBS's Inspector Lewis is a dangerous world for academics, and in this series I bring you the lowdown on who in the academic community is most likely to kill be or be killed.  This post gives the details for episodes 4-5 of US Season Two.  Here's the Intro post; here's the Season One breakdown; and here’s the first three episodes of Season 2.

In the first three episodes of season 2, things look pretty grim for Oxford faculty, staff, students and administrators.  We have victims in all four categories, and two faculty murderers.  Thus far in Season 2, undergrads aren’t as dangerous as they are in Season 1, but the community of Oxford is still pretty dangerous, what with all the murderous ex-Communists and, in these episodes, vengeful parents running around.

Episodes 4 and 5 contain a total of four victims (two in each episode).  Only one—a faculty member—is a member of the university community at the time of his death, but most of the murders connect to Oxford U in some way.  Neither of two murderers is directly affiliated with the University.  These episodes suggest that you can’t escape your past (even by becoming an English professor).  Your high school and college days may or may not be the best of your life, in other words, but they will haunt you forever whether you like it or not.

If you haven’t seen the season, here’s Amazon link.  It’s included with Prime, if you have it.

Episode-by-episode details below the cut.  Contains Spoilers.

Episode 2.4, “The Great and the Good”

Originally Aired: September 20, 2009

The murders in this episode result from the rape of a high school girl named Beatrice by one of her teachers, Oswald Cooper.  It’s intense and not terribly fun to watch in places, and I don’t love the way the episode makes Beatrice’s rape all about her father(s).  The mystery includes a circle of prominent Oxfordians including an ex-diplomat, a developer, and a radio host.  Cooper is an old friend of all three men, and he helps them cover up their social and personal indiscretions.  The ex-diplomat kills him and his blackmailer pal when they discover and threaten to reveal that Beatrice is the murderer’s biological daughter.  Along the way, Beatrice’s “adoptive” father (both he and she have believed all her life that he is her biological father, as well) performs post-mortem castration on the first victim and tries to kill himself in prison.  When I write that down, it sounds ridiculous.  To a degree, most episodes of this show are a little ridiculous, but like most episodes, it works.  Oxford University has very little to do with this episode, with the big caveat that the three prominent Oxfordians knew both Cooper and Beatrice’s mother in their college days, and the episode is all about the consequences of their early relationship.   As a bonus, we get to see Lewis and Hathaway throw a mattress in a dumpster.  Illegally.

Totals: Two victims and one murderer, none of whom are affiliated with the university.

Conclusions: You can’t really escape the follies of your youth, including the romantic ones.  Also, choose your friends wisely for heaven’s sake.

Episode 2.5, “Allegory of Love”

Original Air Date: October 4, 2009

This is (another) weird one, involving incest(ish), Islam, and fantasy literature.  Lewis gets in a few digs at Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, et al, and because I kind of agree, that’s fun.  The mystery centers on Dorian Crane a fantasy author/Ph.D. candidate who is about to get married and move to Harvard (if he weren’t ABD at Oxford and already a successful novelist, I wouldn’t buy it, but okay… at least for TV).  It turns out that the first victim, a Czech barmaid, was murdered by mistake because the murderer thought she was Dorian’s fiancée.  This is unfortunate for a number of reasons, not least because the murderer turns out to be Dorian’s mother.  She couldn’t even recognize her own son’s fiancée?  She then turns her murderous rage on her son.  Why?  Because he called his fiancée his “muse,” and she wanted that title for herself.  We learn that Dorian is adopted, and that when he was in high school the two of them had a sexual relationship.  Just say it: Eeuw.  They stopped when he went to college and she would have been okay with his marriage, but she couldn’t handle him using someone else for artistic inspiration.  As a bonus, Superintendent Innocent at one point tries to set Lewis up with the (long-divorced) murderer, showing us exactly why you shouldn’t let your boss manage your romantic life.

Totals: Two victims.  One is both a grad student and a faculty member, the other a community member.  One murderer, not affiliated with the university.  That makes at least three really crappy murderer-parents in this season alone… though only this one murdered her own child. 

Conclusions: Grow up.  Living in a fantasy world is dangerous to yourself and others (I believe Lewis says pretty much this at some point).  More importantly, establish appropriate boundaries, even with your adopted children!