Endeavour: it's Inspector Morse with a moustache – and surprisingly great
This 60s-set prequel to the legendary ITV detective series
might look like a cosy Heartbeat-style drama, but something far darker and
stranger is at play
Graeme Virtue
Tue 12 Feb 2019 13.30 GMT Last modified on Tue 12 Feb 2019
15.11 GMT
This article contains minor spoilers for series 1-6 of
Endeavour
It sounds borderline bizarre to insist that the sixth series
of a TV drama is a good jumping-on point. But if you’ve so far resisted ITV’s
Sunday-night staple Endeavour – AKA The 1960s Adventures of Young Morse, Before
He Got So Crotchety (Although He is Actually Already Pretty Crotchety) – the
latest series seems consciously designed to get any latecomers up to speed. It
helps, of course, that this is a prequel to one of the most prestigious and
popular ITV dramas of all time. Even if you don’t know where the character has
been for the past five seasons, you probably have a decent idea about where he
is going to end up.
That love for John Thaw’s original Inspector Morse remains
strong almost two decades after the final episode aired, to the extent that
Endeavour has from the outset seemed a little skippable. Beyond the potential
commercial benefits, was there really any urgent need to investigate the trials
and traumas that forged such a beloved character, even with the added aesthetic
pleasures of a 1960s Oxford setting, all duck-egg blue cars and Green Shield
stamps?
Probably not, but from that unpromising start Endeavour has
evolved into its own distinct and sure-footed entity, something often much
darker and stranger than its swinging 1960s marketing might suggest. You might
imagine it as the bookish cousin of Heartbeat, ITV’s pastoral motorcycle-cop
timewarp. Yet, with its elaborate whodunnits featuring theatrically
self-involved characters brought to heel by Morse’s persistence and cool logic,
Endeavour is often more reminiscent of Jonathan Creek. Compared to other
long-running primetime dramas, it also features an unusually consistent tone
and grasp of its key characters, perhaps because creator Russell Lewis – who
cut his teeth on the original Morse plus the spinoff Lewis – has so far written
every single episode, a remarkable achievement.
Season six is set in 1969 and kicked off last Sunday with a
budget-burning blast of Led Zeppelin’s What Is and What Should Never Be, a
suitably operatic overture in its own frazzled way. This felt like a soft
reboot, not least because Morse (played by the gaunt and watchful Shaun Evans)
has nurtured a man-of-the-people moustache after being demoted to uniform sergeant.
After the dissolution of his old Cowley CID – superseded by the formation of
the new Thames Valley police – Morse is now pootling around a pastoral Oxford
patch where his most urgent case is locating a wayward horse. His former
squadmates, including gruff but warm-hearted mentor Fred Thursday (Roger
Allam), are also adjusting to new circumstances in different units, although
all are still haunted by the unsolved murder of one of their colleagues, a
gloomy hangover from series five.
By the end of the opening episode, Morse has untangled a
murder and child abduction and is promoted back to plain-clothes duty, though
he opts to retain the ‘tache. In the process, he has already managed to rub his
new DCI Ronnie Box up the wrong way. A cocky transplant from London with
hands-on experience dealing with armed blaggers, DCI Box seems like the
antithesis to Morse and his analytical methods. But there is the meta thrill of
seeing Simon Harrison as Box, essentially channelling Thaw’s boisterous Regan
from The Sweeney, butting heads with Evans, embodying a younger version of
Thaw’s Morse.
So you could easily join the Endeavour party in season six.
Sure, you will have missed out on some pivotal moments, such as Morse briefly
being jailed (wrongly), going undercover as a teacher with a pretend wife and
unexpectedly triumphing in an It’s A Knockout sprinting heat while wearing an
oversized costume, but you’ll easily get the gist. While it might be a stretch
to claim that Endeavour is like a real-ale Better Call Saul, that rare prequel
that not only manages to match the original but overtake it, it is consistently
well-crafted and satisfying in its own right.
By the end of its current run, Endeavour will have reached
27 episodes, just six shy of the original Inspector Morse’s total of 33. As a
mark of respect, the popular Lewis spin-off halted at 33, so perhaps there
isn’t even that much more of Endeavour runway to go. Evans has already let slip
that at the end of this season we’ll see Morse move into the flat where he will
spend the rest of his life. From there, surely season seven will involve a
fateful meeting with the true love of his life: a vintage 2.4 litre burgundy
Mark II Jaguar.
Endeavour continues Sundays, ITV, 8pm
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