Although audiences will no doubt clamor for more, Kevin Whately is gladly saying farewell to Inspector Robbie Lewis, the character he has been playing for almost 30 years on the public television series, Inspector Morse, and its offshoot, Inspector Lewis.
The eighth and final season of Inspector Lewis begins tonight on PBS’ MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!, with three episodes airing through August 21.
In a recent telephone interview, Whately said he became involved with Inspector Morse after colleagues urged him to portray Inspector Lewis, a younger man on television than he was in the Colin Dexter novels on which the series was based. John Thaw portrayed Inspector Morse.
He said that in the early part of this century, he was again asked to portray Lewis in a spin-off series, opposite CS James, the character portrayed by Laurence
“They asked me for two or three years whether I’d consider spinning Lewis off. I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t think it was a good idea. I didn’t think the character was strong enough. An executive on Morse took me out to lunch, said if you do one and it’s a failure, we will leave you alone. I did one as a pilot and it took off immediately. We were back on the moving train.”
Whately said Inspector Morse ran for 33 episodes and that Inspector Lewis will run for the same number of episodes. “Morse was so important to me, I didn’t want to go beyond that number,” he said.
Another factor in the series’ conclusion: Lewis, the character, was getting on in years, and Whately, who is 65, said he didn’t want to be a “70-year-old policeman,” especially since British police generally retire at 55.
“We really have finished. Laurence and I have decided we don’t want to do it. We worked on it ten years and think that’s enough,” he said.
Whately, who is happily now spending time with a new granddaughter, gardening, and working on charity activities for disabled children and Alzheimer’s disease, said he would start "pestering" his agent again “from Christmas onwards” about new work.
He said he would like to “pick and choose more. Having hit 65, I don’t want to work myself to death, which I think is what John Thaw did. I think he took on far too much, and I don’t want to go the same way.”
As for the global appeal of Inspector Lewis, Whately attributed it to "great scripts, good characters--that goes down well all over the world.”
Ever modest, he denied the quality of his acting might also be responsible for the series’ popularity.
“There are lots of good actors around. I’ll bet there are about 100 actors in Britain who could have played my part if they had been lucky enough to get it. Hanging on to John Thaw’s shirttails would have been just as popular,” he said.
