Endeavour: the First Full Season

Detective Constable Morse is repeatedly told to pay more attention to traditional police work than his hunches.  However, the young policeman’s instincts often prove correct.  Such will not necessarily be the case later in his career.  Viewers will start to understand why Robbie Lewis often had to tidy up after his mentor in the first full season of Endeavour (promo here), which airs this Sunday as part of the current season of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery.

Following last year’s successful one-off, the socially awkward Morse has impressed the dapper DI Fred Thursday with his aptitude, but he is not especially popular with the rest of the force.  This definitely includes their new by-the-book-seniority-over-merit Chief Superintendent.  Morse will not do his career many favors as he openly defies orders and protocol in the season opening, Girl. 

When a prominent nuclear researcher’s unstable daughter becomes the prime suspect for murder, Morse sets out to clear her name.  Obviously, this is not Superintendent Bright’s policy and even the only-so-indulgent Thursday is skeptical.  An okay procedural, Girl goes out of its way to portray the Edward Teller-ish character in a negative light. While it introduces the supercilious Bright and the stalwart Constable Jim Strange, it is the weakest the series, so far.

Quickly rebounding, Fugue represents Endeavour at its strongest.  Morse has been busted down to “general duties,” but when a murderer starts leaving opera-related clues, the inexperienced DC is pulled back into the thick of things.  Crisply helmed by Tom Vaughan (best known stateside for Harrison Ford’s middling Extraordinary Measures), Fugue incorporates several clever clues and nicely evokes the time when police forces were only just beginning to come to terms with the serial killer concept.

The current season maintains it momentum with Rocket, another strong crime story with particularly strong period details.  During the relatively new Queen Elizabeth’s state visit to a struggling munitions plant, a worker is murdered in the back office area.  It turns out Percy Malleson was the factory’s equivalent of Morse, a standoffish fellow suspected by his fellow workers of being a management snitch. 

However, he was not really Malleson, but Eustace Kendrick, the prime suspect in a local girl’s unsolved disappearance several years ago.  A well written case, Rocket’s ultimate murderer could never conceivably be the perp in a Hollywood produced show, which makes it jolly refreshing.

The season concluding Home is not a bad episode, but it emphasizes character development over the investigation.  Morse and Thursday largely chase their tails as they try to deduce the murderer of an Oxford professor.  However, fans will get a large helping of backstory when Thursday confronts the London gangster whom he blames for the death of his former Sergeant.

Shaun Evans settles in quite nicely as the title character, playing him with the right mix of prickliness and earnest guilelessness. Likewise, Roger Allam’s Thursday might be the smartest character currently on television.  Morse fans will also be happy to hear John Thaw’s daughter Abigail regularly appears as muckraking editor Dorothea Frazil (she rather grows on viewers, in fact).  Anton Lessor (recognizable from The Hour, The Scapegoat, and Spies of Warsaw) is a bit buffoonish as Bright, but humanizes him a bit in the series closer.

Endeavour is one of the better British mysteries going.  Evans and Allam play off each other well and vivid sense of time and place—Oxford in the early 1960’s—adds a distinctive flavor. Recommended for fans of Colin Dexter’s characters as well as those interested in the era, the first full season of Endeavour launches tomorrow night (7/7) on most PBS outlets nationwide.

Endeavour: the Young Inspector Morse

Consider it a portrait of the curmudgeon as a young man.  Inspector Morse would make a name for himself as the prickly but refined Chief Inspector with a taste for opera and poetry.  However, in 1965, Endeavour Morse was an Oxford drop-out just hoping to catch on with the Thames Valley force after a stint in the military.  His first case will be difficult, bringing him back to his former college in Endeavour (promo here), the one-off Inspector Morse prequel, premiering this coming Sunday on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery.

Mary Tremlett, a local school girl, has been murdered and her former lover, an Oxford student, has committed suicide.  It is supposed to look like an open-and-shut affair, but the details do not quite fit.  Constable Morse’s inquiry leads him to the faculty member tutoring Tremlett (under questionable circumstances), who happens to be married to Morse’s favorite opera diva.

Though preoccupied on several fronts, Morse doggedly follows the clues leading to sleazy car dealer with half the force in his pocket.  To proceed, he will need the career-risking assistance of his prospective mentor, the somewhat Morse-like Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, who drives a Jaguar and has little patience for his colleagues’ corruption.

For a television mystery, Endeavour is fairly successful misdirecting viewers, despite dropping some fairly obvious clues.  It also comes fully approved and vouched for, featuring a cameo appearance from Morse author Colin Dexter, as well as Abigail Thaw, the daughter of the late John Thaw (the star of the original Morse series), appearing briefly as the editor of the Oxford newspaper.  Frankly, it seems strange that Endeavour was initially produced as a one-shot, much like the Morse spin-off, Inspector Lewis, but in each case, the viewers have clearly spoken.  A full four episode season of Endeavour is reportedly already in the works.

In his eponymous first outing, Shaun Evans looks appropriately awkward and earnest as Constable Morse, but it will be interesting to see how the character and his performance evolve over time.  Indeed, it is easy to understand how this early case would appreciably contribute to his disillusionment.  Fortunately, Roger Allam (who once played a suspect on the flagship Inspector Morse) provides plenty of color as the flamboyant but principled DI Friday.  The only real weaknesses on Constable Morse’s maiden voyage are his suspects, who are a rather bland lot, in an English upper crust sort of way.

Sure to please the preexisting base, Endeavour should also appeal to viewers of PBS period dramas.  There is definitely a sense of nostalgia here that should help the prequel series establish its own discrete identity.  An entertaining feature length murder mystery that has plenty of potential for growth (again, much like Lewis before it), Endeavour is easily recommended for Brit TV fans when it airs this Sunday (7/1) on most PBS stations nationwide.