In the 1980s the Independent Television Corporation (ITV) was looking for a new detective series, and simultaneously it appeared that many viewers wanted less violence, fewer gun-fights, and (please!) no more car chases. Several of the imported American crime programs were coming to the end of their runs, and perhaps the stage was being set for a quieter, more cerebral breed of detective, where brains were likely to be a better bet than brawn. The Zeitgeist was definitely changing. But there were some early doubts about whether Morse could and should fit the bill. It might well be, as someone pointed out at the time, that as well as being “more everything else,” such a program might also turn out to be more tedious. “Dexter’s idea of dramatic confrontation”, I read, “is a couple of Classics dons arguing about Aristotle outside the Ashmolean.” Fortunately for me, two very gifted men, each with huge experience in the TV world, were very much pro Morse. After reading some of my novels, both agreed that the beautiful city of Oxford would be an ideal setting for a series of murders, solved by a lugubrious Wagnerian and his solid (never stolid!) sidekick, would be a potential winner.

At a meeting in a north Oxford pub, The Friar Bacon, Kenny McBain, Anthony Minghella, Julian Mitchell, and myself drank a few pints of beer together and talked and talked of many things … of which I remember only one with clarity. When I suggested that after lunch I would with the greatest pleasure show them around a few of the murder sites in Oxford which I had already used, McBain smiled and declined my offer: “We’ve already visited them, Colin.” After lunch, half launched upon the shores of light was Inspector Morse that day.

Thereafter, the whole machinery of the televisual requirements began to fall into place: the casting, the film scripts, the locations, the schedules, the directors, the producers, etc. The biggest item of contention, as I recall, was the proposed one-night two-hour, prime time programming. I had thought that this was asking a little too much of our likely audience. I was wrong. But again, as with the books, I was extremely lucky. Things can of course so often go sadly awry, and several of my crime-writing colleagues have not experienced the good fortune of which I was continuously aware in ITV’s treatment of Inspector Morse.