Allegory of Love

I wanted to write a review on the 'Allegory Of Love' after seeing it for a second time last night and believing that it might be my favourite Morse/Lewis show ever (big call, I know). When I stumbled upon the reviews on here I was shocked. Fans do not like this episode! What the? Perhaps this is a sign that I still haven't grown up! I loved the fantasy aspects of this storyline, and as these great murder mysteries often do, the wonderful use of metaphor. For me, the love of Morse/Lewis is not based around correctly guessing the guilty party (or sometimes parties), but of simply taking in the interesting characters on the movies, and the wonderful (and often harsh) truths that are spoken about human behaviour and personality.

Though I must admit that I rarely correctly select the murderer anyway!

Morse was always driven by great characters and wonderful writing. Endeavour and Robbie were a marvellous combination - as much as anything else because they were so different. Even if the case itself wasn't too fascinating, the byplay between the two leads was always entertaining in itself, and of course the actors did a terrific job in their roles.

I am very impressed with what has been made of the Lewis series. I mean, how do you replace an iconic character such as Morse? You can't really, but the new lead of Hathaway is a very good try (not to replace Morse directly, but to keep up the high standards of the Morse shows). Again, it is the differences in character between he and Lewis which give the shows much of its appeal.

Lewis can be viewed as being a bit prettier I suppose than the Morse classics, but that doesn't always mean that it is less gritty. I wonder if the show will last the 33 episodes that Morse did? I hope that it does, though only if the high standards can be retained - which I believe was certainly achieved in 'Allegory Of Love.' The murder suspects were pretty much all wildly engaging characters (but I don't mean lovable) and the whole story within a story was to me, wonderful. I believe that the pieces of this story all came together perfectly in the end, and I would encourage any murder mystery fan to see this, even if they haven't seen another Lewis episode before.

Maybe I'm biased. I do love the Chronicles of Narnia.

But if I did have my own special box of treasures then I'd try to spare some room to store this DVD.

Seven out of ten simply because a muddled 'Masterpiece Mystery' still has redeeming features: a great ensemble cast, nice sets, and interesting camera angles. However, as our IMDb colleagues have noted, the story drags and the chemistry isn't there between Laurence Fox and Kevin Whately (as our inveterate DI Lewis). What makes these Brit mysteries work is the complexity of the lead character - not a plethora of sub-characters and possible suspects. In fact, that's what makes only two Hollywood TV 'Mysteries' somewhat compelling: 'House', and 'Lie to Me', both played by non-USA leads.

So, for this story, we need another element to make it a compelling character study: i.e. someone accuses Lewis of improprieties; an interesting romance develops and flops, because Lewis fails to pull the trigger (Inspector Frost made a franchise out of that one!); or an old nemesis shows up to make his life miserable. None of these are terribly original, but they add depth to the tale whilst we sort through the suspects.

One of our reviewers fingers Churchett (screenplay) as the culprit. I concur that this script is sub-par, and that his 'Marple' episodes left us wondering what the heck we were watching. So, BBC - get the message?

A woman is murdered while walking home at night. The murder weapon? A large mirror. Lewis and Hathaway investigate and find connections with two professors, her doctor, the doctor's son and famous novelist Dorian Crane but nobody with a clear motive.

An intriguing mystery. Some great twists and turns, red herrings and revelations. The connections to famous authors (Tolkien, CE Lewis, Lewis Carroll) was interesting and sees Hathaway earn his keep due to his literary knowledge.

However, the episode suffers from the usual Lewis (and Morse) weakness in that the revelation of the guilty party seems to come out of the blue. You also have suspicion jumping from one person to another until the actual guilty party is the one you least expect. The regular Morse-Lewis plotline of a romantic interest ending up being the culprit appears again - this is getting rather predictable.

The most interesting thing about this episode is that Laurence Fox (who plays Hathaway) gets to play opposite his father, the legendary James Fox. James Fox plays Professor Deering who is a definite suspect in the case and the two are in some of the same scenes.

I loved all the references to fantasy fiction and the twists and turns of symbols at play. The story writers were having a field day with plot puns, misdirection, and innuendo. Lewis is typically resistant to entering the imaginary worlds of his killers but with Hathaway's literary reflections and some bumpy reading by Lewis, they solve the mystery of classical dimensions. But for me the cherry on the cake of this episode was the meta-story of seeing father and son, James and Laurence Fox, working together. I bed they had as much fun acting in this one as I did watching them together.

Inspector Lewis can be a bit boorish at times. He is a bright man and a good detective, but his disdain for Oxford makes one wonder why he works that beat. This is about fantasy, a legitimate form of literature when posed by the likes of Dunsany, Tolkien, and Lewis. The murder here, while related to this world, is more about human to human pain. It portrays the writers as wasters of time. I thought it was a more than adequate effort.