Sunday, October 5th sees the welcome return of the long-running Inspector Lewis series to PBS television.
Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox are back in a seventh mini-season of the beloved British police procedural, featuring three murder mysteries set among the idyllic spires of Oxford.
The season opens at 9pm on October 5th with an episode titled “Entry Wounds”, as we see Lewis adjusting to retired life until he’s asked to team up with his old colleague, Hathaway, newly promoted to Inspector after an extended break from the force. Their first case back together is a complicated one that bridges the worlds of neurosurgery, blood sports and animal rights.
The following Sunday (October 12th at 9pm), features an episode entitled “The Lions of Nemea”, in which the pair’s abilities are tested as they investigate the brutal murder of Rose, an American Classics student. Suspicion immediately falls on a young professor who had recently broken off an affair with her, but as the detectives delve further into the case, they only find more secrets and murky motives.
Beyond Good and Evil” ( October 19 at 9pm) sees Lewis revisiting his first successful arrest as a Detective Inspector, thirteen years on, as new forensic science calls into question a conviction, leading to the case being re-opened for appeal. Lewis fears the worst – but nothing can prepare him for a new string of murders resembling the original murders with the original weapon.
The Inspector Lewis series began as a 2007 spin-off from the wildly successful and long-running Inspector Morse series, starring John Thaw, which ran from 1987 to 2000 and which saw Whately playing second banana to the opera-loving Morse. The enduring popularity of the show worldwide – especially in America – led to the show’s creator, Colin Dexter, to create a whole new series of cases for Lewis – now promoted to Inspector – to solve following Morse’s on-screen death in 2000 (Thaw himself died two years later).
For more information to watch a sneak preview of episode one, visit www.pbs.org.
