Special Feature: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 3 Part 1

Special Series: Inspector Lewis: The Academic Body Count, Season 3 Part 1

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 1-3 of US Season Two.  All previous posts in the series (in reverse order).

I’m back, after an unanticipated hiatus induced by a combination of novel-writing, family insanity, and other things, and I have for you another Lewis post.  Season 3 is shorter than Season 2—five episodes—so I’ll break it down into two posts.  This post covers episodes 1-3, and I’ll cover episodes 4-5 in the next installment.

Having gotten the formalities out of the way, let’s move on to the season!  We have a total of eight victims in these episodes, of whom four are in some way directly affiliated with the university.  None are students, but two are faculty, one is an administrator, and the fourth is, nominally at least, staff.  Of a total of three murderers, one is staff and two are unaffiliated.  So, once again, Oxford is more dangerous to academics than in danger from them.

I’d forgotten until this rewatch how many of my favorite episodes are in Season 3.  We have rockstars, war reenactors, and a community orchestra, and we learn about both Hathaway and the M.E., Dr. Laura Hobson.  Also, I’ve learned since my last Lewis post that there are new episodes airing in Britain, as we speak.  We should have them here at some point (I’m looking at you, PBS), so there’s even more deadly fun ahead.  But, without further ado, onward to the Season 3 details!

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

Details for Episodes 3.1-3.3 below the cut.  Contains spoilers.

Episode 3.1, “Counter Culture Blues”

Original Air Date: August 29, 2010

The episode opens at some sort of orphanage, where a kid name Lucas learns by searching an administrative office that he has family.  At first, we don’t know why this is relevant to our Oxfordian heroes, especially as we cut almost immediately to a scene where a priest complains to Lewis and Hathaway of shooting (guns, not cameras) on Sunday.  Lewis and Hathaway find themselves investigating The Addiction, a sixties rock band, and we learn about Lewis’s youthful musical taste.  This being Inspector Lewis, it’s not long before there’s a murder, and young Lucas is the victim (sad).  He’s killed by a car right outside the band’s compound, so there’s trouble in store for The Addiction.  Their trouble increases when their lead singer, Esme Ford, returns from the dead and their old manager, Vernon Ox, arrives on the scene.  More than one person always dies on this show (what’s with these Oxford murderers?), so it’s not long before Bone, a techie, is murdered by fake overdose.  The university enters the picture when Dr. Samantha Wheeler of the music department, who writes liner notes for rereleases of Addiction albums, is… you guessed it, garroted (well, maybe you didn’t guess the method, but a professor had to die, right?).  The connection between the three: they all have the potential to reveal, in one way or another, that the resurrected “Esme Ford” is actually Esme’s twin sister Maureen.  Maureen is Lucas’s grandmother (the “family” from the opening), the Bone discovered that Esme wasn’t Esme when she tried to hit on him, and Samantha could tell the voices weren’t the same.  The murder?  Vernon Ox, the manager, who stands to make a killing if the band gets back together.  What’s a murder here and there in pursuit of fame and fortune?  Of course, Lewis and Hathaway won’t stand for it.

Totals: Three victims, one faculty and two unaffiliated.  One murderer, unaffiliated.  A couple of undergrads, including a band member’s daughter, are persons of interest, but otherwise not a lot of action involving the university.

Lesson: Dabbling in rock and roll might get you killed.  This is true even (especially?) if you happen to be a respected expert on Medieval music.  It’s like your mother told you, stay away from those rock musicians, they’re up to no good.

Episode 3.2, “The Dead of Winter”

Original Air Date: September 5, 2010

We learn in this episode that the British also have Civil War reenactors—though of course they reenact the English Civil War.  We also learn that Sargent Hathaway was once of the “kids off the estate” at Crevecour Hall, where his father used to be the estate manager.  Lewis and Hathaway end up at Crevecour because a Dr. Stephen Black, who was found dead on a tour bus, worked there.  Dr. Black was an art historian, and in the course of valuing the family art collection for sale, he stumbled across information about treasure rumored to have been buried at Crevecour during the English Civil War.  Police presence is also required at Crevecour because a reenactor accidentally gets nonfatally shot, part of the murderer’s grand scheme to distract everyone from his crimes.  The second murder victim is the current estate manager, Ralph Graham, and the method is fake suicide by hanging.  There’s a lot of stuff about a pedophilic lord and a red-herring affair, but I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you: the butler did it.  Why?  Because many years ago, he murdered Graham’s wife when she threatened to reveal that the Lord of the Manor was molesting her daughter.  Everyone just assumed she’d run off, but the art historian and Mr. Graham were both about to reveal, in their own ways, what the Lord had done.  Essentially, he’s a young, crazy Mr. Carson who takes loyalty to “the family” much too far.

Totals: Three victims; one faculty, two unaffiliated.  One murderer, unaffiliated.  As usual, Lewis and Hathaway’s investigations take them to the University for a bit, but it’s pretty clear that Dr. Black was murdered because of his work at Crevecour.

Lesson: Administrators are always bugging faculty to be more “engaged with the community,” but between this episode and the last one I’m starting to doubt the virtue of that plan.  That’s two profs in a row who were murdered by using their expertise for non-university ends.  As for the other two victims, well, they too were killed because they knew too much…

Episode 3.3, “Dark Matter”

Original Air Date: September 12, 2010

This episode involves Gustav Holst and brings us the phrase “Undercover Clarinet,” so I love it beyond reason. Largely because of the focused nature of my Lewis posts, I haven’t talked a lot about Dr. Laura Hobson, the resident M.E. and Lewis’s love interest, but she plays a pretty prominent role in this episode.  We learn here that she plays clarinet in a community orchestra, which confirms that she is awesome (can you tell what instrument the Mysterious Scholar will be playing in next week’s community band concert?).  Ahem.  Anyway, the orchestra is supposed to perform Holst’s The Planets, conducted by a famous guy who is a person of interest in the investigation.  If you don’t know The Planets, go here.  I’ll wait.  Okay, now that you have the appropriate soundtrack, we can carry on.

The first murder victim is Andrew Crompton, the Master of an Oxford College.  I don’t think the episode ever tells us his actual field, but he’s a “keen amateur astronomer” and dies because someone pushes him down the observatory stairs.  Delightful.  We soon meet an actual astronomy student, Jess Hadock, and his girlfriend the bassoonist.  She’s temporarily a suspect, but those of in the know don’t worry too much about her, because she’s a woodwind player.  We also meet Lady Raybourn, who is a professional astronomer, amateur cellist, and wife of the community orchestra’s conductor.  (I’ll just take a moment to say here that I love how this episode shows community musicians.  We are everywhere, and we have day jobs of all sorts!  Music is cool!).  The Raybourns were friends of the Cromptons, so they’re temporarily suspects, too.  Lurking around the episode are blackmailing Porter Roger Temple and his wife, a cleaner (nice digs at Oxford—I had to clean my own dorm room!).  They’re Jess’s aunt and uncle and they snoop, a lot.  Things heat up when a college doctor is killed by a sniper during an orchestra rehearsal, which leads Lewis, Hathaway, and all of us to pursue leads related to a college gun club.  As a result, we find out that Mrs. Temple murdered Andrew Crompton because the two of them were having an affair, and she suspected that he was being unfaithful to her (as well as his wife, of course!) with the doctor.  Of course, Crompton was visiting the doctor because he had a brain tumor, not because they were sleeping together, so it’s all just sad and sordid. 

Totals: Two victims, one administrator and one staff member.  One murderer, also staff.  Pretty much the whole episode is set at the university this time, so lots of Persons of Interest there, but especially the Raybourns, Jess, and Kate (so two faculty and two undergrads).

Lessons: Don’t.  Have. Extramarital.  Affairs.  Also, keeping your brain tumor secret is weird and usually only happens in Nicholas Sparks novels.  People want to help you.  Let them.  Finally and most importantly, community musicians are cool, especially clarinet players!