‘Endeavour’ returns with new case, new tensions for Swinging ‘60s detective

After an exciting finish to the third season, “Endeavour” throws its young detective hero Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans) into a rather ordinary British whodunit episode at the beginning of Season 4 that hints at the end of something.

It picks up in 1967 just two weeks after the bank robberyhostage situation that left Joan Thursday (Sara Vickers) shaken; realizing her relationship with Morse is just going in circles, she leaves her home in Oxford.

That angers her father, Fred Thursday (Roger Allam), who happens to be Morse’s boss at the police station. He sees his young assistant as partially to blame for Joan’s leaving.

The discovery of the drowned body of a researcher on a cutting-edge computer project doesn’t even shake the tensions. Thursday writes it off as an accident. Even the second body doesn’t raise concerns, except in Morse, of course. It takes a third death to get the police department onboard.

Meanwhile, Morse has been assigned to escort around a Soviet chess championand already has a number of possible suspects on his list. Besides regretting not expressing his feelings to Joan, he is angered he failed the sergeant’s exam because his test paper never arrived. He

A scene from “Endeavour” on Masterpiece Mystery! on PBS.

chafes at finding himself now second to Jim Strange (Sean Rigby), a not-too-sharp former beat cop who has made sergeant, and wonders if he has been sabotaged.

The station’s boss, Chief Superintendent Bright (Anton Lesser who plays Qyburn on “Game of Thrones”) warns Morse that he has made enemies by exposing police corruption and suggests a fresh start elsewhere.

The episode called “Game” is often stylishly mounted. The killer collects death masks of his victims. But for the most part, it takes little advantage of what makes the series enjoyable. While Evans continues to convey Morse’s complexities, he had little to react to. Allam’s Thursday glowers for most of the episode, and almost none of Morse’s inner life was explored.

Another strong point for the series has been the time period — the swinging English ‘60s and its changing mores. Except for a nod to rudimentary computers and short skirts, the episode could have

PHOTO COURTESY OF MAMMOTH SCREEN/MASTERPIECE/ITV STUDIOS

PHOTO COURTESY OF MAMMOTH SCREEN/MASTERPIECE/ITV STUDIOS Shown from left are, Roger Allam as DI Thursday and Shaun Evans as DC Morse in “Endeavour.”

been set a couple of decades earlier. “Game” does bring back two welcomed characters — the droll medical examiner Dr. DeBryn (James Bradshaw), and the smart, young police constable Shirley Trewlove. Also back is Abigail Thaw as the local newspaper...