Inspector Lewis: The Pilot and Complete 1st Series

I love Inspector Lewis! This follows, obviously, Inspector Lewis as he arrives back in Oxford after his wife passed away. He immediately gets thrown into a murder mystery and starts hunting down Oxford's killers. He is aided by Detective Sergeant Hathaway, a witty, intelligent cop. The scenery is gorgeous, shot all over Oxford, and there is light humor throughout all the episodes. This contains four episodes, the Pilot, Whom the Gods Would Destroy, Old School Ties and Expiation.The Pilot shows Inspector Lewis getting back into the role of Detective Inspector. A young student at Oxford gets murdered at a sleep research facility. The investigation turns to Daniel Griffon, the son of a racecar driver. As more bodies drop, Inspector Lewis has to find what links the victims and who wants them dead.Whom the Gods Would Destroy follows several members of the same Oxford class, long graduated, that start showing up dead. As Inspector Lewis digs deeper into their past, the deaths seem to have a link to a crime that happened when all the victims were in school.Old School Ties has an old criminal hacker that decides to write a book about his experiences. He goes to make a lecture at Oxford and one of the students arranging his visit shows up murdered. Inspector Lewis investigates not only the criminal but also the other students to try and figure out what happened.Expiation starts with an Oxford housewife that is hanged in her own house. When Inspector Lewis looks into the murder, he discovers not only a secret with the housewife, her husband and their best friends. He also finds a secret with the housewife's past.

These are absolutely first-rate British crime dramas. Intelligent, well-plotted stories; spot-on quality acting by people who look like real people, and not Hollywood cuties; well-developed characters and excellent chemistry between the principals. The Oxford settings are almost as good as being there in person. They follow the "Inspector Morse" series; the long-suffering Sergeant Lewis has now made it to the rank of inspector, and he has scars from his own tragic backstory. He treats his sergeant (a fascinating and complex character in his own right) better than he himself was treated by Morse. What makes this series even better than the earlier one is that there are subtitles for us Americans who may be hard of hearing and a bit unfamiliar with the "received pronunciation" of the toffs and profs and the dialect of the humbler folk. For years I rented the disks from Netlix and decided that I want them for my own. I'm watching the earlier ones for the third time now, and they have not lost their sparkle.

Yes, you will want the whole set if you liked Kevin W., the former DS for DCI Morse, and who is now a DI himself, trailed by 'Boy Wonder' in tracking down those miscreants!

I suppose that Inspector Lewis will always be linked to Morse, not a bad thing as that series was brilliant, as were the actors! John Thaw and Kevin Whately made a series believable and never made an character mistake! It was not seen to be acting, they had become the people you knew and trusted.Now Kevin Whately (DI Lewis)picking up his life after such personal tragedy, and Laurence Fox (DS Hathaway)giving his own stamp on this charming and very likable, though sensitive character, are just right to carry Thames Valley Police and Oxford into this series for a long and gripping run.An older Lewis is a humble, dedicated man with intense sympathy for the victim. Hathaway has respect for Lewis; though you cannot (see) all of this young man's character at once, you realize that he will support Lewis no matter what!I am now looking forward to the next releases of "Inspector Lewis" and I will continue to collect this series

I gave this five starts tho in reality , i would probably have given it 4.5, because the first program has to set up all the characters and I thought was not quite as good as the other programs. That being said this is one of my favorite series. The writing is topnotch and the two main characters play so well off of each other that I hope I will be writing reviews of season 25. The setting is what puts this series over the top for me. It is set in Oxford. The interplay with the police and the students .professors and even some of the help who seem to think they are far above them make for great drama and comedy. If you want a mystery show with great writing , terrific actors,plots that make you think and go to an encyclopedia from time to time, and a setting that I do not think can be topped this is the show for you.

Inspector Lewis is a topnotch Brit police show and it part of Masterpiece Mysteries on PBS. Right up there with Foyle's War. I think the earlier seasons might have been the best because I got the idea that they used different script writers later on. But, you can pretty well count on this series all the way through.

Good DVD transfer, quality picture. nice to have all the shows episodes. Kind of wished there was more than one episode per disc, but given each are about 90 minutes long I can live with only one on a disc.

Love the show; even more than Morse sometimes because Lewis and Hathaway have better chemistry. Blasphemy I know.I would’ve rated higher (rounded up) if not for that second episode however. It was a good story but I’m pretty sure the UK has a criminal charge similar to the US’s conspiracy to commit murder; or exactly like it considering we likely got it from them. There’s simply no way to spin that a crime wasn’t committed, but because she’s pretty Lewis doesn’t arrest her. To be fair though Morse probably would’ve done the same.