Directing was a but the tache wasn’t my idea!
ENDEAVOUR IS BACK FOR A SIXTH SERIES – AND THIS TIME SHAUN EVANS IS MAKING WAVES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE CAMERA. HE TELLS MORE ABOUT HIS NEXT CHAPTER IN THE HIT MORSE PREQUEL
ITH a newfound moustache, a countryside outpost and a shot at directing – it’s all change for Shaun Evans in the latest series of Endeavour.
But the Liverpool-born actor, who will reprise the title role of a young DS Endeavour Morse for a sixth time, wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Uniform, tache, I’m up for it!” quips Shaun, 38, who has led the IT V crime drama – written by creator Russell Lewis – since 2012. “Anything that’s new, where you don’t feel like you’re staying in stasis, is good.”
Following the dissolution of Oxford City Police and the merging with Thames Valley Constabulary in season five, the latest instalment, set in 1969, picks up with the team as they find their feet.
“Endeavour is back in uniform and on his own out in the sticks,” Shaun elaborates. “He’s been stationed in a one-horse town in the countryside and he’s fairly isolated as he’s the only policeman there. But he’s quite happy.
“In terms of the rest of the team, everyone has been cast to the four winds. Thursday (Roger Allam) is at the new Castle Gate station, Bright (Anton Lesser) in the traffic department and Strange (Sean Rigby) is in a new role as well.”
“There’s a lot of change and we see the reaction to this change,” explains Shaun, who reveals the force is still mourning the loss of DC George Fancy, who was murdered at the end of the last series.
“Their relationships with one another are completely fractured though and the first film is about seeing where everyone has landed in the interim, and the team finding their way back together.”
It’s a reshuffle that has allowed the show to introduce a “whole new raft of characters”, Shaun reasons. “Which shakes it up and allows it to go in a new direction, rather than doing the same thing.”
And his new, well-groomed facial topiary?
“It wasn’t my idea!” he protests, laughing. “A couple of years prior I’d done a play in Chichester and both of the lads had come to see it [Russell Lewis and executive producer Damian Michael Barcroft],” he says.
“I had a tache in the play, so
Russell said to me, ‘I was thinking because you’d fancied it there, maybe you want to shake it up and not be recognised [for Endeavour],” he recalls.
“I thought, ‘ Yeah cool, that’s a good idea’. But I tried not to think too deeply about it ; I just didn’t shave my top lip.”
“Although that said, there’s some great movies as you move into the late Sixties, early Seventies,” notes Shaun, whose credits also include Silk and Whitechapel.
“I’m thinking of that
Sidney Lumet movie, The Offence. Sean Connery plays a policeman with a big tache in it [and] it’s a great movie – and it’s kind of the period.” But decade-defining looks isn’t all the latest prequel provides. Stemming from the era are four brand new cases – each divided into a featurelength film – set to test Endeavour, Thursday, and Oxford’s finest. Named Pylon, Apollo, Confection, and Deguello, each story reflects changes in Britain and the wider world, Russell teases.
“In the first one, a little girl has gone missing and she turns up dead,” Shaun begins. “The second one is specifically the Moon landing, the third one is like Happy Valley, and then the fourth is this tower block falling down and the world of government corruption.”
But it’s certainly not one small step for this particular man when it comes to Apollo – as the second episode marks the star’s first series directorial.
“It’s great acting and it’s great directing, so if you can mix the two [together] where you know the team, have shorthand with everyone, and you know the timbre of the stories as well...” he muses. “It was a joyous experience and to be forced to approach things in a specific way was good for me, personally.”
This isn’t Shaun’s first foray behind the camera, however. He’s been praised for his turn directing a handful of Casualty episodes, too.
“I’ve always been interested in it,” he confides. “I just think at the moment you can do anything; it’s a good time for T V and for storytelling, in general,” he elaborates. “And I just