Coda

The hostage situation is such a tv cliche... The Joan Thursday spiral doesnt make dramatic or emotional sense. The plot contrivances are not clever, just clumsy. I'm surprised so many thoughtful viewers dig it where i see it as a very wrong turn for the series.

....

The series is very entertaining. Capturing the attention of the viewer.

However the poor choice of vehicles is irritating. This episode is set in 1967 but a Triumph 2000 MK 2 is visible, though not introduced until 1969. It is also unlikely that the Police would be driving about in a Jaguar Mk 1 which would be at least eight years old by 1967. Several other vehicles are used which either are too old or not yet released on to the market in 1967. I know most people will not be bothered by this but it does make me wonder what else is badly researched.

The story lines are varied and not repeated from episode to episode. They often have a twist at the end.

Russell Lewis once more demonstrates that he's seen a lot of films and read a lot of books, which some may think doesn't need to be made clear to us yet again. This time, the central situation is taken directly from Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon", with a bank stick-up going wrong and the staff and customers (who include the soon-to-be- promoted Morse) being taken hostage whilst police marksmen hover outside and a media circus starts to brew. During his desperate hours as a hostage, Morse manages to find new evidence for the case he's working on (actually on bank premises), and solves the case rather cleverly. We then get the second homage to "Dirty Harry" in this brief season, as he bluffs the chief robber into believing his gun is empty. Russell Lewis must really like that film. Still, Morse is the underdog in the scene (unlike Harry Callahan), which gives it a bit of extra edge, and the episode is generally enjoyable. It could be that Lewis intends all his little allusions to form one big allusion, to the habit French film-makers had in the 60s of including "hommages" to other directors and writers they admired. One may murmur, not for the first time, that Jean-Luc Godard has a lot to answer for.

I am so gutted that this series has come to an end already, but they certainly saved the best for last, each episode in this third series has been excellent, but this concluding part was the best yet, I absolutely loved it. Some great character development for Morse once again, we are seeing how his actions are shaping the future of the character that we would see through John Thaw.

All the elements were there once again, fabulous production values, glorious music throughout, a wonderful script and some superb performances, the regulars were utterly brilliant once again, I'd argue that's perhaps been Shaun's best outing to date, Sean Rigby is very much coming into his own as DS Strange.

I am already excited for Series 4.

This was virtually perfect, 10/10

We enjoyed this episode, but I'd like to add my choice of anachronism, although of course there are so many efforts in the series to avoid such errors. It's the use of the word "Chair" for "Chairman" of a department at Oxford. I don't have any personal knowledge of Oxford, as another person does here, nor have I done any research, but in the 1960s the gender-neutral term was not really in use anywhere with a long tradition. The idea of such a word I think was lampooned for another two decades as implying that a piece of furniture was running the show.

I wanted to make this comment rather than wanting to review the show, but it was a good entry in a good series.