Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kevin Whately, Laurence Fox, Angela Griffin, Tim Piggott-Smith, Clare Holman, Ralf Little, Nicholas Jones, Steve Pemberton, Emma Cunliffe, Helen Schlesinger, Shanaya Rafaat, Andreea Paduraru, Naomi Scott, Finn Cole, Steve Toussaint, Paul Bigley, Doreen Mantle.

Just when viewers have got used to the thought that there might never be another reason to long for the quiet of Oxfordshire, to revel in the mystery of the Isis and the quaintness of Middle-class murder, I.T.V. reel back Detective Inspector Lewis, D.I. Hathaway and Detective Sergeant Maddox for another round of homicides in the leafy university city.

It is of course a welcome return, for there really can never be enough reasons to not have Lewis, like Morse before him, on the screen. The delving into a world that relies on instinct, good old fashioned detective work and one that doesn’t stray into the world of the hi-tech and allowing the deduction to be the star rather than machine made judgement.

To bring back an old favourite is always appealing, not least in that Lewis still seems to have so much life in it and one that even being a spin off from Inspector Morse could still yet do the same with Hathaway, played with much grace in this particular story, One For Sorrow, by the excellent Laurence Fox. The timing is there, at the end of this particular three part series, Lewis will have reached the same amount of episodes recorded that Morse made.

Timing is everything, so it seems in the world of murder and when a young artist is found dead in her apartment after only a few hours before opening up her new show, a show that deals with the intensely brutal subjects of taxidermy and violence, and the finding of a long dead body in a well, the sins of Oxfordshire’s elite are brought out in the open.

With Nicholas Jones playing the part of Hathaway’s dementia-ridden father with carefully considered preciseness and Angela Griffin really leaving her mark on the show as the persistent D.S. Maddox, Lewis’ return to the screens is to be embraced as the encroaching dark nights of the dying year unfolds.

Ian D. Hall