The essential episodes of Lewis
Watch these 15 in order and you've got Lewis — each pick states its reason.
- 01
DI Lewis returns to Oxford after several years absence and is reluctantly assigned by his new boss, DCS Innocent, to the murder of an Oxford mathematics student who was shot while participating in a sleep study. Lewis must decipher a cryptic clue left in an old case file by his former boss, Chief Inspector Morse.
- 02
DI Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the murder of Dean Greely. As the investigation continues, they discover that Greely and three other men had formed a club during their Oxford student days, the Sons of the Twice Born. Today, the men have little contact with one another and initially deny that their club existed. When a second member of the foursome is murdered, it becomes apparent the they have a secret, one from 30 years ago and that someone is out for revenge.
- 03
DI Lewis is less than pleased when he and DS Hathaway are assigned to protect Nicky Turnbull, a former criminal turned successful author. Turnbull had actually cheated two Oxford colleges in his computer scam and had received death threats. Turnbull is everything Lewis dislikes but he grits his teeth does the job. Turnbull is in Oxford to make a speech at the request of the Students Union but things take a serious turn when Jo Gilchrist, a student and a member of Turnbull's reception committee, is found strangled. Gilchrist wrote for a student newspaper and was about to expose a professor's exam scam. When Turnbull is shot in the courtyard of his hotel, Lewis realizes that the man's wife was his first girlfriend. He also learns that they were on the verge of getting a divorce.
- 04
When an Oxford housewife is found hanged in her home, Lewis and Hathaway unearth a far darker murder case than the initial suicide verdict suggests.
- 05
And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea
At first the murders of Reg Chapman, a handy man at the Bodleian Library and gambling addict, and Nell Buckley, a popular Art student, seem unrelated. However, it transpires that Chapmen stole parchment from the library upon which Nell and another student persuaded Philip, a brilliant, autistic young painter, to innocently forge letters by the poet Shelley for the international collectors' market. When both victims, for different reasons, threatened to expose the mastermind behind the scam, they were killed.
- 06
Lewis investigates the garroting of an aging Oxford don planning an Wagnerian festival and discovers a tenuous connection to his former boss, Inspector Morse.
- 07
Lady Hugh, the intolerant Bible-fanatic president of Oxford's Mayfield college, turns against anything gay. Shortly after popular, decent student Will McEwan shoots himself in the head in St. Mark's church, after waving the revolver at Reverend Francis King, who is himself found torturously murdered by a hot poker in the head the next day. The link between both victims is The Garden, a pious society offering 'Christian answers to youngsters' contemporary questions', its emblem being a Fenix, which both Will's suicide note 'I lost my way between Getsemane and Calvary' and a message on King's door 'Life born of fire' refer to. Lewis's partner, Detective Sergeant James Hathaway, was a friend of gentle gay Will in school and again at university, but his brutally gay-bashing father Henry McEwan apparently repudiates Will posthumously finding out and his mother believed he was getting steady with a nice girl. Lewis keeps digging in all those circles, discovering more secrets and deceit. More blood is to be spilled, and the meaning of names proves crucial...
- 08
Robbie Lewis attends a book launch for a fantasy novel penned by prodigious young research fellow Dorian Crane, with whose adoptive mother, Ginny, Robbie's boss Jean is trying to match-make him. Later that night a Czech hotel worker Marina is found murdered. Professor Deering, the uncle of Dorian's fiancee and muse, Alice, confesses to having seen Marina on a foreign website and paid for her to come to Oxford, finding her work. However, as a supposed gay man, he is keen to hush up his sex life with her. Robbie believes that Marina was killed in mistake for Alice and then Dorian is also murdered, in order to preserve a secret well beyond Robbie's imagination.
- 09
Dr Stephen Black is found murdered on a tour bus visiting Crevecourt Hall, where Hathaway's father was once estate manager so the sergeant knows the family. The murder weapon,a candlestick,is found in the family chapel and the priest once knew the victim,who was seen in the grounds a week earlier by Hopkiss the butler and Lord Mortmaigne's nephew Philip. Then the current estate manager dies,an apparent suicide,and Black seems to have known his wife Linda,who left him six years earlier.Whilst Lewis fears Hathaway's friendship with the family -especially daughter Scarlett,making a wealthy marriage to save family fortunes - makes him partial and gives him leave Black's colleague Frances Woodville tells Lewis that Black was after alleged buried treasure,dating from the Civil War, at Crevecourt Hall. No treasure is unearthed but dark family secrets are,relating to the actual fate of Linda and the reason for Black's death.
- 10
Student Amy Katz is murdered whilst taking part in a clinical trial for anti-depressant drugs, overseen by Dr. Alex Gansa, her psychiatrist following her soldier brother's death in Afghanistan. Amy captivated the other young male volunteers, including love-lorn Adam Douglas and Jack Collins - to the intense hatred of Jack's girlfriend Karen - but Amy was in love with the married Gansa. Several suspicious incidents cause Lewis to investigate the doctor.
- 11
Whilst digging in the woods botanist Liv Nash unearths the corpse of academic Murray Hawes,a man seemingly obsessed with solving the riddle of the Snark in the Lewis Carroll poem. Just before his death he had spent two hundred thousand pounds on an original copy of the poem which he felt held the key and was financing himself as a medical guinea pig to Dr Alex Falconer. Forensics show that he was killed in the Oxford Botanic Gardens and carried to the woods and amateur sleuth Michelle Marber places Falconer in the gardens at the time though he confesses to an affair ...
- 12
Lewis and Hathaway are called in to investigate the death of Reuben Beatty who works at the University of Oxford's Department of Psychology. He has been discovered dead injected by etorphine, a paralysing agent in the offices of psychic ‘Randolph James'.
- 13
Hathaway and Maddox continue to investigate the murder of Travis as the trail leads back to Lewis's original case. The two detectives attempt to prevent another murder and Lewis sees himself isolated and alone with his reputation in jeopardy.
- 14
Faced with the seemingly impossible task of identifying the remains of a body discovered in a well, Lewis has also got to contend with new boss Chief Superintendent Moody. Realising that the body in the well is connected to the murder of young artist Talika Desai, the police follow leads into the worlds of drugs, social media and the homeless community, but will they manage to link all the pieces together?
- 15
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