ok hmmm I'm not a fan of inspector morse -sorry but somehow I find him boring.
As for Absolutely Fabulous I think it fair to say that there's two ways you can view it. One is the glamourising of the atrocious lifestyle that is I agree quite frankly unattractive and does ruin lives, the other way is to see it as a warning as to how said lifestyle impacts not only those who have said lifestyle but also the family.
Step back and look at it properly - Neither of the main characters actually do succeed in their lives that well they're constantly looking for something they cannot quite achieve, they may look glamorous but deep down their just constantly down on their luck so to speak. What happens to Eddies daughter, saffron? Well she's the only sensible one and gets responsibility at too early an age and although she's portrayed as being boring and dowdy, she is also grounded and cynical. Do I watch it and laugh? Rarely!
There's actually some quite profound truths about the lifestyle that come across that I don't think the writers and producers intend to be there. It's not there on the surface, if you look at it shallowly then it seems to be glamourising something distasteful and ugly, but if like me you think deeply and look at things from a different perspective to the norm, then you will find that there's a lot more truth to the portrayal than immediately meets the eye.
The problem with such programs is not really that they exist, but rather that people tend to look and want to follow the easy route, the route that looks glamorous and that they think is attractive - ergo Patsy and Eddie, instead of realising that that Patsy and Eddie are failures of the highest order trying to hold onto a misspent youth and who don't know the first thing about real life. They also don't realise that poor Saffron although she may look dowdy and be 'boring' is also failing, simply because she has to be the adult before she's grown up and had a chance to have a life of her own. Saffron though is sensible, and certainly is the closest to a 'normal', functioning adult in the whole of the programme - which is why people who ignore her. Programs like this have a lot to teach us if we are willing to learn and step away from the whole idea of taking the 'easy' and the shallow route.
Sorry for such a long post.