Yesterday was such a disaster for our nation, all falling down and flying apart, that I longed for something familiar and predictable and grumpy like me. So I turned to Inspector Morse on Netflix. An episode I hadn’t seen before, The Remorseful Day.

Should have known better. It wasn’t the usual grousing around Oxford in his Old Jag. He was ill. Very. Barely able to manage his quota of two pints and ten fingers of scotch a day. At home he desultorily tries birdwatching. The only bird he successfully watches is a drab house sparrow.

Two months from mandatory retirement, he knows that both his boss and his sergeant want him to quit immediately. But he persists in pursuing the murder case of one of the many women he’s been infatuated with. He gasps a lot and leans against lampposts. In between gasps he makes out his will. He wants no service, religious or otherwise, to mark his passing.

In the course of his investigation he waits in church to interview a suspect who just happens to be singing Faure’s Requiem. It’s quite moving.

Shortly afterwards he suffers a massive heart attack and keels over on the grass of one of Oxford’s college quads.

They get him to the hospital, where he has his last epiphany to solve the murder, and dies. Remorseful Day indeed.

RIP Inspector Morse.

As I said, the perfect end to a perfectly awful day. The only redeeming feature of the entire episode was the requiem. Which seemed to resonate beyond a simple TV show.

And so to bed.