I lived in Oxford for two years, so I love
Morse,
Lewis, and
Endeavour. (By the way,
Endeavour is not made by the BBC. In the UK it is broadcast on ITV.)
Knowing Oxford quite well, watching the show is interesting, but also sometimes frustrating. E.g., there is an actual department store in Oxford called Boswells, which has existed since 1738, but in the show, the town’s main department store is called Burridges, and the scenes there are filmed in Uxbridge and Reading. Or, while there are several movie theaters in Oxford, the movie theater that appears in one episode is actually filmed at two theaters in London. I get that places change over time, so maybe it is hard to find buildings that remain unchanged since the 1960s, but it’s frustrating to see so many places that are not actually in Oxford. Many scenes at a pub (a recurring location) are shot at a pub about 35 miles away, even though Oxford has many pubs which have not changed significantly since the 1960s.
They also make stuff up, such as there being an underground river that can be accessed from one of the colleges. And on that note, it is frustrating that all the college names are made up, so you have to try to work out which fictional colleges stand in for which real ones. E.g. students from “Lady Matilda’s” are called “Matildabeasts”, which is a reference to students from the genuine St Hilda’s being called “Hildabeasts”. They also make mistakes that would only be apparent to people who have attended/worked at the university, e.g. in one scene there is a don who is said to be an expert in Anglo-Saxon history, but he wears the robes of a doctor of either civil law or medicine. He would be a doctor of letters or, more likely, as he is only in his late 30s, philosophy. And as it’s not a particularly important occasion, he’d be wearing his gown instead of his robe. Like I say, most people would not spot these things.
You are right that Freemasonry is something of a theme. As you probably know, this is because historically (probably much less so today) many British police officers (and lawyers/judges) were Freemasons, and it was believed that corruption was widespread, both with police officers who were Freemasons getting promotions and investigations being compromised. Morse is a Quaker and brings strongly held principles to his work as a policeman, so he refuses to become a Freemason and is fearless in exposing corruption, even though he suffers as a consequence.
Yes, there seems to be a heck of a lot of gang violence in good old Oxford in the 1960s!
Yes, I don’t know how realistic that is. I guess every town would have had people involved in organized crime, such as drugs and prostitution. The thing I found strange was how prominent the West Indian community becomes as the series progresses. I wonder whether this was introduced because West Indian immigration to the UK as a whole was an important theme at the time, even though I don’t think many ended up in Oxford. The main ethnic minority in Oxford are Pakistanis/Bangladeshis, but these do not seem to appear in the series (perhaps they arrived later).
Thank you!