[Televisionary]

Kevin Whately has been playing gruff, sensible detective Robbie Lewis on Morse and Lewis for 26 years. I speak to him about the possible end of the Oxford copper. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Oxford's No. 1 Sleuth: Inspector Lewis 's Kevin Whately on Morse , John Thaw, and the End of the Series," in which I speak with Kevin Whately, star of Inspector Morse and Lewis (which returns to PBS' Masterpiece Mystery on Sunday) about playing Robbie Lewis for 26 years, whether this is the end for the Oxford-set drama, and what's next. Inspector Lewis is due for a vacation. After more than 20 years playing Detective Inspector Robert “Robbie” Lewis, actor Kevin Whately has earned a well-deserved break from investigating murders beneath the Oxford spires. Introduced in Inspector Morse’s first episode (“The Dead of Jericho”), Whately’s Robbie Lewis was the Geordie sidekick of the late John Thaw’s erudite and perpetually cranky Inspector M...

Murder among the dreaming spires? I explore the enduring charms of Masterpiece Mystery ’s Oxford-set crime drama Inspector Lewis , which returns to PBS for a fifth season on Sunday. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Morse Code: PBS' Knife-Sharp Lewis Returns," in which I take a look at both Inspector Lewis and Endeavour from within the context of the legacy of Morse and their role within what I'm calling an Oxford crime trilogy. In a television landscape populated by countless iterations of CSI and its ilk—crime dramas where the emphasis is on forensics as crime-solving technology rather than in old school policing—Masterpiece Mystery’s delightful Inspector Lewis may feel like an odd man out. But in the case of Lewis, which returns to PBS on Sunday for a fifth season (or sixth, if you’re going by the U.K.’s numbering system), that’s a good thing indeed. The show, based on characters created by Colin Dexter, is now itself a long-runni...