DEATH IN DETAIL! THE RETURN OF "LEWIS"

No rest catching the wicked for Hathaway and Lewis in the new series of LEWIS. Image: ITV 1.

With Spring in the air, one thing in UK TV life is certain, they'll be more murders aplenty in the picturesque academia world of pageantry, history and upper class snobbery that is Oxford, in the new fifth series of the popular ITV mystery drama series LEWIS, the sequel show to the excellent INSPECTOR MORSE, created by Colin Dexter, with occasionally world weary everyman Detective Robert Lewis (played with likable ease by Kevin Whately) and partner Sgt. Hathaway (the always equally watchable Lawrence Fox), ex-priest turned sincere and dedicated copper with the pithy comeback, hot on the investigative trail. As usual, the series will no doubt be as stylish and beautiful to look at as ever, the plots even more complicated, confusing and brain perplexing than a game of Sudoku, and the guest stars (this year including the likes of Saskia Reeves, Ronald Pickup, Sian Phillips, Juliet Stevenson and Zoe Telford), in their positions playing both murderer/s, accomplices and red-herrings, always immaculately selected.

This year gets off to a intriguing start set with the episode OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR OFF THINGS, in an all-girls college where an old-school reunion ends with the discovery of a body at the bottom of a stairwell, soon followed by several more deaths, and linked with the unravelling of a deadly secret which could threaten the colleges future. The episode WILD JUSTICE then follows showing a Jacobean revenge tragedy being used as the basis for the murder of two people (including a bishop) during an important educational election at St. Gerard's College.

Sex, money, death, blackmail, hidden truths and lots of piling up bodies in the mortuary-they'll all be found aplenty in LEWIS this year, I'm sure, and Sunday evenings feel all the more right with this particular quality series back on the box.