YMMV / Lewis

• Angst? What Angst?: In "Expiation", two little girls are faced with the death of their mother, and yet remain happy and nonchalant throughout the episode. At first an attempt to handwave it is made, with their grandmother saying that they don't understand what's happening, but a few weeks later they're still giggly and cheerful without any indication that they realize their mother is dead.
• Complete Monster: Vernon Oxe, from season 3's "Counter Culture Blues", uses flamboyant suave charm to disguise a vicious man driven purely by callous Greed. Subtly masterminding the reformation of the famous sixties band the Midnight Addiction, Oxe manipulates a woman into impersonating her dead sister, solely for the riches it will add to their already impressive wealth. Oxe seeks to eliminate anyone who threatens his end goal: killing fifteen-year-old Lucas Emerson by repeatedly running him over with their car, murdering the band's former roadie by injecting him with heroin and framing it as an overdose, and then brutally strangling Dr. Samantha Wheeler with a lute's string, cutting her neck open as she died. Realizing his final obstacle happens to be his own former lover, Oxe drugs and then pushes the helpless but conscious man into a giant macerator, cruelly mocking him the whole time.
• Les Yay: All over "Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things".
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Bradley James is in "Music To Die For", now best known as Prince Arthur on Merlin.
  • It was also an early appearance for Charlie Cox of Daredevil.
  • Tom Mison and Katia Winter both appear in "Allegory of Love" and are recognisable now as Ichabod and Katrina Crane from Sleepy Hollow.
  • Taron Egerton plays Liam in "The Rambling Boy" before becoming Eggsy Unwin in Kingsman: The Secret Service.
  • Lucy Boynton appeared as Zoe Suskin in "The Gift of Promise" five years before her breakout role as Raphina in Sing Street.
  • Daniel Kaluuya (now known for Get Out) plays the friend who prompts Lucas to search for his grandmother in "Counter Culture Blues".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • "Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things" introduces Alison McLennan, who was Lewis' sergeant during part of the off-screen period between Inspector Morse and Lewis. She could have been an interesting recurring character, had she not been revealed to be a Corrupt Cop and killed off a few scenes later.
  • The sleep psychologist Kate Jekyll in the pilot episode was originally intended to serve as a love interest for Lewis, in addition to being a point-of-view character for Lewis to explain his backstory to, for viewers who had forgotten Inspector Morse or never saw it; hence why her prominence seems unwarranted given her peripheral role in the case. The character was dropped and never seen again due to Kevin Whately complaining that there would be no point to having killed off Valerie Lewis if they were going to set up a new love interest right away, and the producers realizing that Whately had much better chemistry with Clare Holman than he did with Liz McInnerny (who played Kate), resulting in Laura Hobson ultimately becoming his long-term love interest.
  • Similarly, the character Liv Nash in series 6 episode "The Soul of Genius" appears to be set up to be recurring love interest for Hathaway; however, her character disappears after the episode despite a clear attraction between the two, and never appears again.
  • DC Gray in "The Ramblin' Boy". Publicity for the show suggested that he was set to replace Hathaway, which would make him a Chekhov's Gunman for a potential series 8. Alternatively, the tantalising scene at the end of the story may have been deliberately Left Hanging. The point is probably moot now, given that Laurence Fox did return for series 8 after all.

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