Almost too sad to describe in any detail. Lewis is itching to get on with an old case that's been assigned him but Morse, recovering from two peptic ulcers, keeps getting in the way and sticking his nose in. When John Wayne put everything he had into his production of "The Alamo," he had the same trouble with John Ford.
There isn't really much else for Morse to do. "Never too late to take up a new interest," he advises Lewis, peeping at a dreary bird in his back yard feeder. "Common house sparrow," says Lewis, deflating the white-belt birder.
A good deal of time is devoted to the case, which is as convoluted as most of the cases in this series, but resolves itself at the end into a case of familial jealousy and a daughter killing her sluttish mother with the connivance of some other kin.
Still, it's Morse's physical decline that occupies the viewer's attention and it must be said he handles it with as much panache as a gravely ill man can be expected to muster. At least when he collapses for the last time it's on the campus of his beloved Oxford.
There isn't really much else for Morse to do. "Never too late to take up a new interest," he advises Lewis, peeping at a dreary bird in his back yard feeder. "Common house sparrow," says Lewis, deflating the white-belt birder.
A good deal of time is devoted to the case, which is as convoluted as most of the cases in this series, but resolves itself at the end into a case of familial jealousy and a daughter killing her sluttish mother with the connivance of some other kin.
Still, it's Morse's physical decline that occupies the viewer's attention and it must be said he handles it with as much panache as a gravely ill man can be expected to muster. At least when he collapses for the last time it's on the campus of his beloved Oxford.