'Lynley' sleuths last cases
As the seventh season of "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries"
premieres Sunday, Aug. 10 (check local listings) on PBS' "Masterpiece" Detective
Inspector Thomas Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) is in an alcoholic funk, shattered by
the death of his wife, Helen.
His fans are pretty depressed, too.
Although the series has been a substantial hit with public television viewers
in America, the BBC recently announced it has pulled the plug on "Lynley,"
leaving fans with just two new 90- minute mysteries for this new miniseason.
"We were really disappointed when the BBC decided not to continue,"
"Masterpiece" executive producer Rebecca Eaton says. "We would have carried on.
Apparently they had other detective fish to fry and decided that 'Lynley' had
run its course. Since we are very much a minority partner in this, there is
nothing we can do except accept it.
"Usually detective shows go on until the detective himself pushes the button
and says, 'That's it, no more,' which is what John Thaw did (with 'Inspector
Morse') before he died. But David Suchet is still doing Poirot, so we will have
brand new episodes of that next summer."
Parker likewise was caught off guard by the show's cancellation, he says.
"We didn't know these were going to be the end when we shot them," he says.
"If I had known that, I think I probably would have insisted on poor Sharon
(Small, who plays working-class sidekick Barbara Havers) holding my hand as we
walked off together into the sunset, and I'm pretty sure she never would have
gone for that. Because we didn't know this was the end, we just played them as
normal. That means things aren't neatly tied up in the last one, but that
episode is different. It's less a traditional 'whodunit' than a 'whydunit,' more
psychological, I think."
Then again, "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries" always had a stronger
psychological component than many mystery series, emphasizing its main
character's emotional state nearly as much as the episode's criminal case.
That's one of the reasons Parker stayed with the series as long as he did.
"When the producers first came to me, I said I'd love to do it, but I worried
that if we went into a proper series, I didn't want to just be a curmudgeonly
copper who was solving crimes every week while drinking the same alcohol and
listening to the same music, like John Thaw in 'Morse' -not that he wasn't
brilliant, but it already had been done," Parker explains. "I needed Lynley to
have a complete back story, one that the audience could get as wrapped up in as
they were in the plot.
"That was very good for us, and it gave me something to look forward to. As
much as we were able to, we made his home life just ever so slightly parallel
the mystery du jour. That's one of the reasons I never got bored playing Lynley.
I always had fun shooting it because the plots had been worked at very hard. We
never just hoped the audience wouldn't notice something. We didn't cheat."
The charismatic Parker quickly drew legions of fans, including one who was
especially discerning: Elizabeth George, the American novelist who created
Thomas Lynley in her first book, "A Great Deliverance," in 1988 and is currently
at work on the 15th sequel to that title.
"The ('Masterpiece Mystery!') series has done particularly
well by the characters," George says. "Both Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small as
Lynley and Havers have really captured the essence of what those two characters
are like in the novels, although they don't look like the characters in any
remote way, but that wasn't nearly as important. The filmmakers chose to reduce
the novels down to the crimes themselves and not to the larger stories contained
in the novels, which was not the call I would have made, but I can certainly see
how they made that decision."
"The great thing that Elizabeth created with those two characters was (the
issues of) class and sex," Parker says. "And there was always that sense that
Sharon and I might get together at some point. I think that was important, to
have that 'would we or wouldn't we?' dangling there."
Parker says he is ready to move on to other roles, although he would happily
entertain doing an Inspector Lynley TV movie if that opportunity arises. For
now, however, he says he is especially grateful for the warm reception given to
both him and the series in America, where fans often recognize him.
"It was bizarre how at one point I was being stopped on the streets in
America more often than I was here (in England)," the actor says. "What's so
interesting about this series is that it is based on books by an American, so it
has given the British a better image of ourselves: 'Oh, so that's what we look
like.' It's that American take on us that has been so refreshing for me to play.
And for that, I shall always be very grateful."
The Lindsaypost,
Posted by: John Crook, 5 August 2008
Posted, 6 August 2008
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