LEWIS : Old School Ties

24 February, 2007 by The_Boss

ITV1 Sunday 25th February 2007 9:00pm to 11:00pm

Old School Ties
In Alan Plater’s script for the second Lewis film, Old School Ties, Inspector Lewis is called upon to protect a celebrity criminal from Newcastle who is lecturing in Oxford.

Says star of the show, Kevin Whately: “Alan’s folks are from Newcastle and he understands the whole Geordie milieu and can send it up as well as revel in it. It’s something we’ve never touched on before but Owen Teale’s character, Nicky Turnbull, is a professional northerner which sickens Lewis. That was something new for me to play. Lewis has severed all ties with his Newcastle roots and never goes back whereas I love the north and still have some family up there. It was a great seam to explore for me.”

And while it is great for Kevin to explore new avenues he doesn’t want to distance himself from the memory of Morse, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in March 2007.

“We are sticking with a similar format. A leisurely pace, Barry’s (Pheloung) music and setting the films in Oxford. Lewis was a big part of the Morse phenomena so it would be difficult to get away from that even if we wanted to. I think there will always be a flavour of Morse in Lewis.

“Sure the dynamics have changed. Lewis has always been a very laid back character and I have tried, wherever possible, to make him more dynamic to drive the films.

“It’s a different job playing Lewis as the eponymous character, in the same way that being the lead actor is a whole different ball game for me. I notice Laurence (Fox) doing things I used to do because he has more free time. He welcomes the guests on set, particularly the younger ones, and makes them feel at home which is what I used to do when John (Thaw) was up to his eyes in work.”

In this week's episode when a bright young female student is found murdered in a hotel room, detectives Lewis (Kevin Whately) and Hathaway (Laurence Fox) are drawn into a case driven by celebrity, ambition and dangerous sexual politics that brings Lewis face to face with his past.

The murdered girl, Jo Gilbert (Frances Albery), is one of three Oxford students who each possess an overwhelming ambition to succeed and have grouped together to achieve this, hatching ploys and schemes to further their ambitions. But as Lewis and Hathaway discover, some of these alliances may not be what they seem…

Nicky Turnbull (Owen Teale), a convicted computer hacker turned best-selling celebrity author, is invited by the group to give a lecture at the University Student’s Union, on face value because of his notoriety. But when he too is killed, Lewis and Hathaway begin to suspect that the two murders may be linked. And could it be that Lewis himself is the intended target, the attempts on his life unwittingly thwarted by the students’ scheming?

The case becomes even more personal when Turnbull’s wife Diane (Gina Mckee) arrives – Lewis’ old classmate and childhood sweetheart. As Turnbull’s widow, she had to put up with his constant casual affairs and stands to inherit a considerable sum of money following his death. Does Lewis trust her anymore; can he believe anything she says? And do the embers of teenage passion still burn somewhere beneath his policeman’s badge?

As the investigation progresses, Lewis and Hathaway find that their list of suspects is only getting longer since Turnbull made enemies everywhere – those he stole money from, those he stole information from, and the fellow prisoners whose stories he stole in order to make his book a bestseller…

Old School Ties is written by Alan Plater and directed by Sarah Harding. LEWIS is produced by Chris Burt, who worked on 11 Morse films, and the executive producers are Michele Buck, Damien Timmer and Ted Childs.