The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (TV Series) Well Schooled in Murder (2002) User Reviews

High Marks

[Polly_Plummer · 7/10 · 23 August 2006]

Unlike the other reviewers, I have never read the book this episode is based on. But I have seen quite a lot of detective shows, and I would argue that this is a good one. The detectives' lives and personalities are put second to the central mystery, but they provide an engaging background to the main plot. The acting, by the leads and the many familiar-faced guest stars, is excellent.

The solution to any mystery, in my opinion, should be two things: surprising and believable. Many detective shows try so hard to shock the audience that they fail to make the solution at all plausible. Too often the murderer's motive is outrageous or based on some vague aphorism like "a person in love will do anything" or "people would do anything for money." The motives in "Well Schooled in Murder" are much more complex, and much more involving, and the film has a strong social message as well. In short, this mystery does what it ought to do, and does it with style. Recommended.

those old school ties

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 30 June 2012]

Inspector Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) returns to his old school to investigate the murder of a young boy and finds out the place is "Well Schooled for Murder," the second entry of this long-running series.

A young boy named Matthew is found murdered at Lynley's old school, and he and Havers go to investigate. The school is teeming with secrets, they soon learn. First of all, how did this young man die? It appears to be strangulation; then the coroner declares it death by asphyxiation. After talking with his classmates, the boy's closest friend says that Matthew kept a diary, but not a written one, a taped one. But he didn't keep the tapes at the school. What made Matthew dangerous? And to whom? Amidst innuendo about homosexuality, cocaine addiction, drug dealing, blackmail, and a deep, dark secret, the detectives attempt to ferret out the truth.

As usual, the Inspector and his associate Havers (Sharon Small) are dealing with personal problems. Havers' father is dying, though they were never close, and she cares for her demented mother who really doesn't understand where her husband went.

Lynley has a dear friend at the school and has to ask uncomfortable questions, which injures the relationship.

I liked this story; I like the Inspector Lynley mysteries and the relationship between upper class Lynley and his lower-class partner. This wasn't the best of the lot, but it's good, with some fine acting not only from the leads, but John Sessions as Lynley's old friend, Martin Jarvis as a teacher and friend of Matthew's family, William Mannering as Clive Pritchard and Joe Sowerbutts as two high profile boys at school.

I recommend the whole series.

Good acting, disappointing story

[Janus_two-faced · 17 September 2002]

To many the world of the traditional English Public School is shrouded in mystery and a fair dose of scurrilous rumour. This piece will do nothing to help their understanding.

A boy is murdered and there is no shortage of suspects to be found in the closeted world of an exclusive boarding environment. Sadly the motivations for each character's actions are so two-dimensional and stereotypical the film fails to engage the audience.

The boys are aloof and arrogant yet show none of the social graces that might be expected from ones educated in such an environment. The staff each have to have their own obvious character weakness. The police are implausible and inept.

It is only the strong performances from a cast of established British actors and young up and coming ones that rescues this piece from mediocrity.

Given the acting talent and the wonderful locations a better screenplay is demanded.

Anorexic TV treatment for Elizabeth George (spoilers)

[E Canuck · 5/10 · 31 August 2003]

Having become an Elizabeth George mystery devotee, I eagerly looked forward to a televised version of the George novel I read most recently. I had seen the one Lynley TV treatment that previously aired on North American network television, A Great Deliverance, and now I know why I was not inclined to seek out that Elizabeth George in print. These overly simplified treatments of her work are slimmed-down to the point of anorexia, verging on death.

Yes, TV is different from the written word--there has to be some adaptation from a book, with all those internal thoughts of characters, action replayed in memory vs. the here and now. It's obvious, though, that a George novel, with its complex examination of relationships and issues, just isn't going to fly in a 90-minute TV version. Too much falls by the wayside, too many changes are made to cram the bares bones of her concepts into the box. "Well-Schooled in Murder" is a skinny schoolboy of a TV movie, and might just as well have not been made--unless all we're after is another mystery potboiler to fill a Sunday supper hour.

Perhaps, if the BBC had the will to make a full-length TV mini-series of each George story they run with, something like the Prime Suspect 6-hour model, this would have flowered into quality television.

As it is, with "Well Schooled...", the novel version of this story is marked by various sorts of ambivalence: a schoolmaster of ambivalent sexuality; a detective ambivalent about his privileged upbringing, including his education and including the aforesaid schoolmaster leaning on him in an old-boy fashion. Detective Havers is ambivalent about her attachment to her parents and their obvious reliance on her, the exclusive school is ambivalent about working class boys admitted to their ranks--everywhere we look is an England where people just aren't very sure--especially about themselves, and especially about a country and a culture in transition. That's an element in George's success, as a North American depicting the English--she's got enough knowledge to bring it off, but enough distance to finger the oddities and discomfort of a society not her own, undergoing change.

In the 90-minute TV quickie of "Well-Schooled" we get an openly gay schoolmaster lecturing his old-school buddy for suspecting him in the murder just because he's gay. Rather than worried he neglected his watch over the students, this guy's primly certain he's in the right and everyone's wrong to have suspicions. Lynley is all too ready to do an old-school friend a favour until people begin to say snide things about the friend. Havers is still ambivalent, but we don't get to see why--the dying and doddering parents are all but snatched from view.

In the end, when the culprits are shown to be bullying students and others riding the code of silence and mutual protection right over a cliff, there's no tragedy or even comedy in it--it all happens so fast it's virtually meaningless. Perhaps that's the real message and meaning of this exercise--anything reduced to fit the needs of mass market culture loses all meaning, reflects the hollowness of the consumer machine that built it. It doesn't matter that it's a public network in another country that produced this show, and a public network in the US that airs it. Competition for eyeballs rules the day, and funding cuts rule public media. Well-schooled, we are, in murdering good stories, when stories are how we understand ourselves.

Unschooled

[tedg · 7 August 2006]

I see a lot of movies, and many of them are mysteries, or advertise themselves so.

I'm particularly attracted to these because I believe they are a sort of sketchpad for experiments in storytelling, how narrative can be boogered around to challenge and engage us. Those that adapt Christie and the Holmes stories particularly interest because they are film adaptations of something that works. How the adapters succeed or fail in working with the narrative tricks, tells me a lot about film works, how my mind works, and to some extent how I make stories about how the world works.

If the project is a BBC production, I am universally disappointed. And that's not just mysteries. If they start with a book that has depth, they trammel all the important achievements of the author. "Bleak House," "Middlemarch," "Pride and Prejudice" are all successful entertainments in their TeeVee incarnations with amusing characters. But these were born with souls and the BBC production factory rips that soul out and replaces it with what they believe is modern storytelling that works — or at least brings viewers back.

I don't get so upset when the original book is by a secondary talent, as is George. But she IS a talent. Her mysteries use the form as the merest of familiar skeletons on which to hang all sorts of internal thoughts. The secrets in her stories aren't who did the murder. There's some revelation in why, of course. But the main secrets are those carried by her two detectives and how they "uncover" them using the detective form of discovery and encounter. Its a worthy thing.

Now this. It is the first I have seen of the series. It has that once-ironically lovely, now dreadful, dreadful woman introducing it, to tell us what it is "all about." As if it were about characters.

So okay, we plod through the story: a murder, procedurals, disclosure. The lives of the detectives hardly matter. The working class woman partner does have her challenge with her folks. But its shoehorned in as a background issue. Its story, you see and they couldn't jettison it even though they ripped out all the connection to discovery.

My. We celebrate that we have publicly funded broadcasting that respects intelligent material in the face of vulgar market needs and general dumbness. Oh yeah?

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Spoiler free review

[mdjedovic · 2/10 · 26 May 2018]

I've been an atheist for almost as long as I can remember. The whole invisible-almighty-geriatric-in-the-sky malarky never seemed to me either a good government system or a fantasy to find comfort in. However, dear reader, this, second, episode of "Inspector Lynley Mysteries", turned me religious. Yes, indeed, a miracle occurred and a wayward son returned to god, if merely, for a brief second, for when "Well Schooled in Murder" finally stumbled to a close, I made the sign of the cross and thanked the good lord for releasing me of this self-imposed imprisonment. This may seem overly dramatic to those who've not suffered through this 90-minute harrowing, but my fellow travellers who've found themselves subjected to this insufferably bad excuse of a detective story will no doubt find themselves in my Lynley-inspired religious awakening. Oh, indeed, the plot sounds promising enough. A pupil at an exclusive, all-boys school shows up murdered and a former pupil turned police inspector, now has to carefully navigate the labyrinthine net of false friendships and misplaced loyalties weaved by a bunch of misguided and frightened teenagers and dogmatic teachers all in the name of "old school ties". However, right from the start, it is evident that "Well Schooled in Murder" will stubbornly and continuously refuse to capitalise on its intriguing premise or naturally atmospheric setting. Namely, the story begins as one of the teachers (John Sessions) rushes through a rainy night towards a small house in the countryside to inquire whether one of his pupils has unexpectedly returned home. Upon finding out he has not, he receives a phone call informing him that the child's body has been found mutilated and laid out on school grounds. This sequence, potentially mesmerising and intense on paper, shows up on screen strikingly lacking in both atmosphere and urgency. Robert Young, a British director who's failed to rise to any great stature during his many, many years of continuous work, directs this thriller in such a "by-the-book", matter-of-fact way that even the most generous of viewers will find it difficult to be thrilled by it. There is not one ounce of visual inventiveness, atmosphere, or drama. Urgency never rears its head either and I'm not sure Mr Young even knows what suspense is. Instead, the episode meanders pacelessly and stutteringly to a finale so unexciting and utterly uninvolving I couldn't believe it wasn't just yet another red herring. Which brings me to the script. Written by Simon Block, it is a mess. A shambolic, bland, needlessly drawn-out retread of various thriller cliches better utilised in most other crime dramas of the past 60 years or so. Here be gay teachers, drunkard accountants, uncaring headmasters, and ambiguously gay students galore and all of them so painfully dull and shallow that I found myself paying more attention to the sound mix than their dialogue. And here was I thinking that such a sad myriad of two-dimensional bores can only be seen during Prime Minister's Questions. None of them has any interesting developments during the story, character arcs, or even character traits beyond the most basic plot-mandated descriptions (drunkard, paedophile, drug addict etc.), Which brings us to our two leads. Two characters whom to call wooden would be an insult to trees whom I've heard can be quite charismatic if they try really, really hard. Inspector Lynley (as portrayed by muttering, mumbling, softly-softly in my chin Nathaniel Parker) is for a lack of words a total upstart prick who charges through the plot with a dismissive manner and highly annoying smirk on his very slappable face. He is sort of like Morse if you stripped Morse of his soulfulness, melancholy, and basic human decency. Beyond these traits, of course, Lynley has no character and I emerged from this episode without ever learning anything about him at all. Sharon Small emerges from this mess looking a little better, if only because she's a far more capable actress than Mr Parker, however, her character is equally as annoying because her chip-on-the-shoulder non-sequitur soliloquies on class differences are so horribly written I kept waiting for the real leader of the opposition to show up. Again, beyond this character trait, DS Havers is a big nothing. Not even a few asides about her (apparently) dying father help fill out the massive, gaping holes in her "character". It is, of course, also highly telling of the quality of your script, when not even the highly venerable supporting cast consisting of Bill Nighy, Martin Jarvis, John Sessions, and Frederick Treves manage to make anything out of their dialogue. Nighy twitches and hops through his role seemingly entirely unrestrained by his typically uncaring director, Jarvis stumbles around pretending to be drunk and is about as convincing as a four-year-old swearing he didn't bring the mud into the house, and Treves looks surprised, in his one scene, that his agent even dared offer him such dreck as this. Sessions, is the only actor in this dreadful mess, to emerge unscathed mainly because ineffective authority figures who may or may not be gay happen to be his speciality and he seems to be able to direct himself. But his fine performance is merely a drop of good in an overall sea of embarrassing dreadfulness. That the British Broadcasting Corporation would ever put their name to something as wholly incompetent, dry, bland, and shambolic as this is only telling of the state they're in. While at the same time, someone in the same corporation was making the exquisite, stylish, and clever "Messiah 2: Vengeance is Mine", these poor souls were trapped in the limbo that is "Inspector Lynley Mysteries". It has been a long time since I was both so completely bored and yet utterly transfixed by the sheer incompetence of a production. "Well-Schooled in Murder" should stand alongside "Keith Chegwin's Naked Shame" as one of those cautionary tales about how not to do IT, whatever IT may be. Our killer may be well-schooled in murder, but sadly the filmmakers have no clue how to do their jobs.