 Murgatroyd's work has particularly focused on the cinematic style of Ovid's work, which he shows employs elaborate and often highly subtle devices to create a vivid picture within a confined narrative.Murgatroyd particularly looks at Ovid's relationships with other authors, notably Livy (from whom Ovid is at pains to distinguish his poetic rather than historical enterprise) and Virgil, and traces how Ovid uses their narratives to construct his own identity in relation to his predecessors in a spirit of friendly competition.He has also traced the progression of Ovid's narrator through the divine interviews from a seemingly naive and somewhat overwhelmed poet to a full-fledged "vates" who ends up in command of the narrative process.