Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Kevin Whatley, Laurence Fox, Angela Griffin, Clare Holman, David Warner, Oliver Lansley, Zoë Tapper, Peter De Jersey, Mali Harries, Tristam Saunders, Ian Puleston-Davies, Emerald O’ Hanrahan, Steve Toussaint, Lynda Rooke, Tosin Cole.

The streets of Oxford will be poorer for the fact that Lewis, one of the true greats of British Crime Drama, has been allowed to finish before its time. Robbie Lewis, a man taught by the best that the dreaming spires of Oxford could wish to have investigating its murders and foul deeds, a man to whom honour was all and a man who came back after riding into the sunset, this was a man with a past so knotted in the streets of Oxford that to lose him, the audiences might find themselves bereft and asking What Lies Tangled?

Unlike the final episode of the popular Morse series, Lewis was allowed to sample life beyond the fires of the Oxfordshire force and yet it wasn’t without its big bang finale as the stakes were driven to a huge high, the cost of getting the wrong conviction too vast a cost and it was one that saw Robbie Lewis tie himself up in knots as he fought tooth and nail to get to the right culprit.

Good drama always attracts a good cast, sometimes it doesn’t fit, the names just too big, ungainly in the character cast and yet occasionally a particular story will jump off the screen and have viewers relishing the challenge to see the potential pitfall and enjoying the fact that there wasn’t one to be found. In the great David Warner, the enjoyable appearance of Zoë Tapper and the excellent and shamefully underused on television Oliver Lansley, this final ever episode of Lewis had avoided the possibility of grinding down the viewer with such a huge name that it would defeat the purpose of the Oxford Detective’s reasoning and deduction. Instead by having household names, ones that do justice to the programme and the history of the series and that of Morse, it allowed the macabre nature of the story to follow through with precision and meticulous timing.

Whilst not all is lost in the Oxford world of the crusty and thoughtful detective as the prequel to Morse, the tantalising Endeavour, is soon to return, to lose Lewis feels as though the three decades has all come to a blinding halt, that the way forward for one of the most enduring and endearing of British detectives has finally and utterly come to a dead and bitter end.

What Lies Tangled is no misrepresentation of a great series; it enhances it to the point where it truly will be much missed.

Ian D. Hall