YMMV / Inspector Lynley

• Jerkass Woobie: Barbara in the pilot, "A Great Deliverance". Viewers spend most of that episode both wanting to cuddle her because she's had such a crappy life and smack her for being bitchy — at the same time.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Like they would really kill off the show's Deuteragonist.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize:
  • Those familiar with Matthew Goode as a bad guy in Stoker and Ordeal by Innocence, would probably look askance at Lynley's resentful, junkie younger brother Peter in A Suitable Vengeance. Though he looks so young it takes a while to recognize him. He turns out to be a target of the murderer, instead.
  • Jemma Redgrave turns up in a significant role in "If Wishes Were Horses". She didn't do it.
  • Honeysuckle Weeks and James D'Arcy appeared as a married couple in "Know Thine Enemy". Played Straight, since they were the Big Bad Duumvirate.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: If the writers wanted viewers to believe Havers and Lynley aren't falling head-over-heels in love throughout the course of the show, they really shouldn't have had them call each other their reason to get up in the morning, or given them the infamous Cry into Chest at the end of "In Divine Proportion" that looks like nothing so much as a man comforting his traumatized lover. Many, many fans have pointed out that Lynley has much better chemistry — and a much healthier relationship — with Barbara than he ever did with Helen.
• Retroactive Recognition: Tons of current stars started out as minor characters on this show, including Henry Cavill (Superman in Man of Steel), Richard Armitage (Thorin in The Hobbit), James McAvoy (Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men Film Series), Samuel West (Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small), and Matthew Goode (A Discovery of Witches) as Lynley's younger brother. Catherine Russell, meanwhile, would go on to break into the British TV mainstream as Serena Campbell on Holby City.
• The Scrappy: Lesley Vickerage's Helen, who is by and large considered a whiny, selfish milquetoast. Catherine Russell's incarnation of the character is generally considered likeable enough^note the chief complaint being "she isn't Emma" (if a bit bland), but virtually everyone wants Emma Fielding from the pilot back.
• Woobie: Both the lead characters, in spades. When the storyline gets sick of torturing Lynley, it takes a break to snack on Barbara. And of course, because the two are so close, when one of them is hurting, the other is too. Luckily, the comfort and strength they find in each other helps make up for it — a little bit, at least.