Usually old television characters don't die, they simply fade into re-runs but once in a rare while a series offers a sense of real finality - the killing off of a major character. Characters are often placed in danger when ratings need a boost but usually they survive the peril (Dallas, The West Wing) seldom will a show go to the ultimate extreme of killing off a main character, notable exceptions include The Vicar of Dibley, All in the Family and Mash. For two series to dispense with major characters in the same week is almost unheard of but when those shows eliminate their stars you can just barely resist the urge to check for icy build-up in Hades.
Last week British telly audiences faced the end of two eras and bid farewell to a pair of cranky old men who had become beloved staples of UK (and world) pop culture. Oxford's opera loving Inspector Morse (John Thaw) and One Foot in the Grave's angry old man Victor Meldrew (Richard Wilson) are no more. but shed no tears for these final acts are merely the natural, if rather un-jolly, ends for two series that steadfastly stayed true to form as intelligent and unsentimental depictions of two very different men. While it's a bit gutting to see them go, especially given the rather poor state of television these days, at least they've gone in style.
John Thaw knows all too well what it means to become inextricably entwined with his character in the public's mind. As the first Inspector Morse mystery went into production in 1987 there must have been some anxious thought as to whether the public would accept The Sweeny's Joe Reagan, Thaw's previous high profile role, as the frankly unsympathetic Morse but 33 mysteries later (and a body count of 80!) has become Britain's most beloved detective since Sherlock Holmes and inspiring a fanatical following for both the series and the Colin Dexter novels upon which it was based. In the final Inspector Morse mystery The Remorseful Day Endeavor Morse meets his end and while fans may never forgive them the men behind Morse, Dexter, Thaw and Kevin Whately, Morse's intrepid Sergeant Lewis, had all had more Morse then they could stand and were thrilled to put the detective to rest. Whately had gone so far as to bow out of the previous installment, The Wench is Dead, and Thaw has been pursuing a number of other series including Kavanaugh QC.
David Renwick, the writer behind the brilliant dark comedy One Foot in the Grave had originally pledged that wretched retiree would never be killed off, despite the constant stream of physical and mental abuse he both
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