I don't think, Lewis. I deduce. I only ever deduce.
The American tourist episode. First broadcast 25 December 1987.
An American tourist, Laura Poindexter, is found dead in a hotel room at the Randolph Hotel, apparently from a heart attack. Morse suspects foul play, as a unique Anglo-Saxon artefact belonging to the victim has gone missing.
This episode contains examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Sheila Williams, the tour guide, is rarely seen without a drink. Janet Roscoe tries to get the other tourists to sign a petition complaining about her, but no-one seems interested.
- Always Murder: Played with; this episode has a body-count of four, of which two are the result of murder. The others are a fatal heart attack and a drug-induced suicide.
- Asshole Victim: Theodore Kemp. Even more so in the (subsequent) novel.
- Christmas Episode: Only in terms of the broadcast date. This did not go well for ITV, as the show was up against the more established Miss Marple over on the BBC. As a result, this is the only episode of Inspector Morse to have had less than 10 million viewers for its first broadcast note .
- Creator Cameo: When Morse and Lewis have their first drink of the story in the bar of the Randolph Hotel, Colin Dexter and Julian Mitchell (who wrote the screenplay for this episode) can be seen drinking wine in the background.
- Deadpan Snarker: Max.Max: Three corpses in twenty hours. Are they paying me overtime?
- The Dog Bites Back: After getting nagged by his companion Janet Roscoe for most of the episode, Phil Aldrich tells her off at the end.
- Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: Downplayed by the American tourists who are visiting Oxford. Some of them may come across as a bit brash, but not in terms of their dress sense.
- MacGuffin: The titular Wolvercote Tongue, an Anglo-Saxon artefact that goes missing from Laura Poindexter's hotel room when she has her fatal heart attack.
- Novelization: This was the only episode of Inspector Morse for which the corresponding novel was written afterwards (all three previous episodes, and two of the three subsequent episodes in this series, were based on novels that had already been published). This one was based on an idea of Colin Dexter's (specifically, a 16-page synopsis that Julian Mitchell turned into a screenplay). Four years later, he turned it into a novel, The Jewel That Was Ours, which fleshes out the tourists' backstories and introduces a new sub-plot which provides another motive for the murder of Theodore Kemp.
- Red Herring: The notion that Laura Poindexter was murdered.
- Shout-Out: The diver's hand holding the titular jewel above the waters of the canal at the end is this to depictions of Excalibur being raised out of the water by The Lady of the Lake.
- Wrong Assumption: Morse suspects that Eddie Poindexter killed his wife. And Theodore Kemp. Plus, he reckons that Laura Poindexter and Howard Brown were having an affair. He's wrong on all counts.
