ROLE OF A LIFETIME:

After more than 20 years playing Detective Inspector Robert "Robbie" Lewis, actor Kevin Whately has earned a well-deserved break from investigating murders beneath the Oxford spires. Introduced in Inspector Morse's first episode ("The Dead of Jericho"), Whately's Robbie Lewis was the Geordie sidekick of the late John Thaw's erudite and perpetually cranky Inspector Morse before becoming the lead of his own spinoff, Lewis.

While Whately has a slew of roles on his resume--he also starred in British drama Peak Practice and comedy Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, as well as countless other projects, including The English Patient--Robbie Lewis is the role still most closely associated with the 62-year-old actor. He has played the gruff detective from 1987 to 2000 on Morse and from 2006 to the present on Inspector Lewis.

The much loved show returns for its sixth (or seventh, if you're going by the ITV ordering), and possibly final, season on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery on Sunday, a season that finds Lewis and his partner, Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Laurence Fox), grappling with change, uncertainty, and possibly even a happy ending of sorts.

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