The Good:
The Not-So-Good:
**This episode originally aired in May 2012. If you are unfamiliar with the series, be aware this review contains spoilers.**
“Believe me, a storm is coming.” – Lavon Hayes
My favorite police show returned for 2012 via Masterpiece Mystery! last week and gave me exactly what I wanted: A warm, comfortable, only somewhat surprising 90 minute excursion to Oxford, England, where Detective Inspector Robbie Lewis (Kevin Whatley) and Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Lawrence Fox) solve serial murder after serial murder (mostly on the sprawling and gorgeous Oxford University campus) by walking around, asking questions, and, most of the time, being grumpy.
The crime in the latest episode was no big deal. In fact, I already can’t remember the first victim. The second victim (who actually died earlier than the first but ya gotta go with the twists) was more memorable: A young genius working for an Oxford doctor. He stays in mind not because of anything about him, but because his bereft mother so brilliantly turned from an obnoxious Miss Marple wannabe/nuisance to the “sympathetic client” the best U.S. cop shows used so well in the ’70s. She was so sympathetic, in fact, that brusk, impatient Inspector Lewis was soon cuddling and reassuring her like a real dad.
Which brings us to what I really love about INSPECTOR LEWIS: The two leads and the way they interact with each other and the various intellectuals around them. Or don’t interact. Because beneath their surface differences (Lewis is practical and, for all practical purposes, anti-intellectual; Hathaway is a Cambridge-educated seminary drop-out), both men possess a stubborn reticence to share anything of themselves with anyone…and each worries about that trait in the other, well knowing the loneliness it causes.
Because we’re all fanboys at heart, everyone of us:
Oh, and also because this could be one of the best-written – if not the best-written – s-f shows in history. But why read about it when you can watch:
Not only does the series sound intriguing, but Starz is doing something we’d like to see a lot more of: Promoting it by showing what a star its creator, writer David S. Goyer is. Let’s say that again: Goyer’s a star and Starz knows it.
Comic-Con 2012 Video: First Teaser for Starz’s ‘Da Vinci’s Demons’ Unveiled
by Lesley GoldbergThe 1st teaser for Starz’s upcoming historical fantasy series Da Vinci’s Demons has debuted and it really is just as cryptic as you’d expect.