As you may know, Thaw died of cancer yesterday aged 60. I have written some thoughts about my personal reactions to his death on CoM. In the CoM archive there are also some thoughts on the final Morse episode which you might find interesting.
Objectively, and avoiding sentimentality, it's hard to assess how good he was as an actor as everything he did in his last decade were either Morse or inferior variations on the Morse character (which in itself may be an inferior variation on Dexter's original Morse). Even in the Sweeney he always seemed to be straining towards playing Regan like Lear. None of the genuine involvement that you get from a Hoskins or a Mirren. Morse suited him because he didn't really have to do any work - he was just playing himself.
Nevertheless, it was a horrible and nasty way to die, and no one deserves it.
― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 22 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)
seeing it in the paper this morning it did come as a shock (i do not
know whether it was expected). he seemed somehow younger AND older
than 60.
― gareth, Friday, 22 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)
John Thaw announced he was suffering from throat cancer last summer.
I gather he was a heavy smoker. Did he really play himself with
Morse? I caught an interview when he referred to the many letters he
received from adoring female fans, whilst recognising with a hint of
sadness that it wasn't him but Morse they were trying to conctact.
Thaw seemed more personable, warmer more open. No matter how often
its explained to me I still can't fathom Morse's evidently abundant
sex appeal.
RIP
― stevo, Friday, 22 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)
I never liked Morse the TV prog — there was
something insufferable about it — and I'm
afraid watched the final ep when first
broadcast in a spirit of levity (as in: a silly
and tiresome and up-itself project come to a
suitably hilarious and misconceived end).
Thinking about that now — not least in the
light of Marcello's contributions to ILx over
the last year — I suppose I want to modify
that a bit, or at least recognise the degree to
which I (my whole family) use jokes and
lightness to deal with deaths we (after all)
needn't respond to (fictional deaths in
particular). Because of the vagaries of
Parkinson's Disease, my father's death has
been an imminent spectre looming over
family life for — in fact — 25 years, so long
expected that it's turned into something else
(a strange, complicated bonus: he's still
alive and — in Parkinsonian terms — pretty
healthy). Which means I suspect that we
have come to trust levity as a spell which
has worked, for us: as in, we mocked death
and he decided he'd call another time.
The problem with TV procedurals is they
disrespect death in a different, possibly
less helpful fashion: they make it a weekly
plot device, a pretext for the detective-
conjuror to put on a show and tie up all the
ends. The final ep was an opportunity to
unravel that habit a bit; because actually the
"pretexts" and those around them (the bit
players who only ever appear in one ep) are
left with endless ends that will never be tied
up — dreams unrealised, domestic squabbles
unsutured — which is the messy stuff which
(generally) falls to the TV cutting-room
floor (or, which is in some ways worse, just
becomes pretext for the actor playing the
conjuror-detective to do anomie, angst,
doubts, off-the-all "range", blah blah). So
yeah, the Morse final ep finally put the tier-
upper in the position of utterly undignified
unravelment (he collapses as if drunk in a
college precinct), and his survivor/loved one
(Lewis) in the bereaved mourner's role: but,
well, I'd need to see it again, to be fair, but
too little too late, and — the old Morse
problem — too pleased with itself with too
little justification. Never TV I took
seriously; never TV that surprised me into
taking it seriously. Sadly Thaw was part of
that problem: doubly sad now, since it can't
be put right. The project never gets to
redeem itself. He was several years younger
than both my parents, though — as Gareth
suggests — he somehow seemed an age older.
RIP.
― mark s, Friday, 22 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)
seventeen years pass...
A very thoughtful if short exchange here from early days! I suppose the question is what is drama for to a large degree.
Anyway, a recent rewatch of a couple of Morse episodes over the past few weeks has got my girlfriend and I doing various disaffected/annoyed "LEWIS" comments at random, why because of course. Also, two great recent tweets. First, this from the band Teeth of the Sea:
First time TOTS played Oxford we wore LED belt buckles that, when we stood in a line on the stage, read: “IT’S A RAVE LEWIS” in tribute to this episode.— Teeth Of The Sea (@TeethoftheSea) November 30, 2019
And second from today, a pretty good thread here.
A wee story about John Thaw.
I like talking to taxi drivers. One cabbie told me he'd had a lot of famous people in his car, but his favourite, by far, was John Thaw. He had to pick up John at the Europa Hotel and drive him to the North coast to meet a director about a film. https://t.co/JKwjJqcyjV— Steve Cavanagh (@SSCav) January 3, 2020
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 3 January 2020 19:38 (six years ago)