ENDEAVOUR ON MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!
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 robbery-hostage 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 chafes at finding himself now second to Jim Strange (Sean Rigby), a nottoo-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 been set a couple of decades earlier.
“Game” does bring back two welcomed characters What: Fourth season about the young detective Endeavour Morse set in the late 1960s, starring Shaun Evans. When: 9 p.m. Sunday. Where: PBS — 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 editor Dorothea Frazil. She is the daughter of the original TV Inspector Morse, the late John Thaw. Incidentally, James Laurenson, who was in the very first episode of “Morse,” plays a suspect in “Game.”
It’s doubtful that you won’t be able to spot the murderer or a fourth victim in the episode, and it’s only at the end that a clue is revealed indicating perhaps a bigger mystery in the works.
Since only “Game” was available to review, let’s hope that means “Endeavor” is returning to what it does best.