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The week ahead: can Lewis' intellect go it alone?
Conrad Astley27/ 1/2006
From Morse's sidekick attempting a solo career to the end of one of Manchester's gangsters, Conrad Astley looks at next week's TV.
THEY reformed Queen without Freddie Mercury, The Doors toured
several years ago, decades after the death of Jim Morrison and this
weekend, Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke will perform a Smiths song,
with Morrissey nowhere in sight.
You have to bear all this in mind when considering a new drama
appearing on our screens.
Both actor John Thaw and his character Chief Inspector Morse are,
sadly, no more but while you'd assume his cryptic crosswords,
Jaguar and love of real ale would be consigned to history, this is
not the case.
Eager to keep the dream alive, author Colin Dexter, obviously
well known for his vast body of work apart from the Morse novels,
has taken us back to the dreamy spires of Oxford.
The detective's former faithful sidekick, played by Kevin Whately,
now takes the reigns in
Lewis (Sunday,
ITV1).
But as Lewis was always the amiable and down-to-Earth antidote to
Morse's aloof intellectualism - "this Sophocles character, have we
got an address for him?" - it's difficult to see how this could be
anywhere near as interesting.
These posh telly types can't seem to leave sitcoms alone. Just a
few weeks ago David Liddiment was trying to find out who killed the
format, while this week Alan Yentob is looking at how it evolved
from George and Mildred into The Office, in
Imagine (Tuesday, BBC1).
Let's face it - everyone likes laughing at posh kids, especially
when they're small, ginger and weird.
This is a fact that was exploited by the recent
Rock
School (Sunday, Channel 4) which returns this week.
However, Gene Simmons is taking a very different tack - visiting a
tough comprehensive.
Finally, a piece of Manchester's recent history comes under the
spotlight in
MacIntyre's Underworld: A Gangster's
Funeral (Monday, Channel 5).
The title speaks for itself, as Donal MacIntyre follows up the
programme he made about Dessie Noonan, stabbed to death on a
Chorlton estate last year.
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