Behind the scenes of the new Endeavour
s admired as Endeavour is for its gripping stories, talented actors, seamless direction and heritage setting, a good deal of its appeal lies in its faithful recreation of life in the Sixties.
The sets, the props and the clothes are just so authentic. Who hasn’t watched it and found themselves yelling out, ‘We used to have a car like that!’ or, ‘I had that exact dress/skirt/suit when I was a teenager’.
So it was thrilling to actually be on-set in Oxford – in the 17th Century Old Dining Hall of St Edmund’s College to be exact (the courtyard outside is sometimes used for exterior shots) – and meeting some of the production team.
First I had a chat with costume designer, Molly Emma Rowe.
“It’s my first season on Endeavour,” she enthuses, “and I’m loving it. This series opens in 1969 and I’ve made new suits for most of the male characters. We do source some originals from eBay and the like but when we need a character to be welltailored, it’s better to make a new/old suit, if you know what I mean.
“It’s not difficult to source the kind of striped and checked fabrics that were particularly popular back then. Ready-made, off-the-peg suits from stores such as Burton were becoming popular in the Sixties but characters like Thursday and Bright would have been ‘old-school’ when it came to their clothes and still wearing styles from the Forties and Fifties.
“Not everyone would have been wearing Sixties gear. However, one Sixties fashion we have adopted for the cast is polyester and nylon shirts which need a lot of washing!”
What about dressing the female characters?
“There aren’t that many of them in the show so we get very excited about the ladies,” Molly says. “Again, it’s a combination of sourcing some
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original items and making other clothes from scratch. I might buy an original Sixties outfit from eBay and then alter it to fit the character. For instance, I bought this really beautiful two-piece – a pink mini skirt and matching cape in pink Welsh wool – for Joan Thursday, the DCI’s daughter, who is Endeavour’s love interest, and re-tailored it so it was a perfect fit. There’s a new character by the name of Viv Wall – she’s Joan’s new boss – who’s been fun to dress because her look is more Fifties than Sixties so she’s not very fashionable. It’s fascinating to explore a character through costume.”
Molly says she loves researching the historical aspect of dressing the characters.
“It’s an extremely interesting era to study and there are so many sources to look at – I’ve been watching a lot of old Pathé footage on YouTube. The third film in the series involves a chocolate factory so I designed and made the staff uniforms, taking my inspiration from those worn by real female factory employees of the time. My team and I also like to bring in vintage items that belonged to our mums and grandmas. My mum’s old school tie features in one episode. It’s lovely being able to do that.
“Sourcing shoes is a bit of a nightmare. It’s not so bad with the male characters as they tend to wear classics such as Oxfords and Derbys which are easy to find. We prefer original women’s shoes but the problem is the fit because feet were much narrower then.”
One of the challenges facing production designer Paul Cripps in series six was creating a brand-new police station in Oxford – an absolute necessity since Cowley station was closed down at the end of series five.
“We needed a different look from traditional, historical Oxford – something more ‘brutalist’ and modern, architecturewise,
to fit in with the look of the times,” he says. ‘The Law Library in Oxford, which was built in the Sixties, was perfect for the exterior and we built the interior in the studio.”
The new police station features a computer – a very early model.
“We borrowed one from the computing museum in Cambridge,” Paul
‘We also had to design and make the packaging for the chocolates in the chocolate factory that features in the third episode’
reveals. “It’s the size of an upright piano. We also had a functioning vending machine shipped over from the US as it proved impossible to find a period one in the UK. We created the wrapping for the snacks and chocolate bars it contained. We also had to design and make the packaging for the chocolates in the chocolate factory that features in the third episode. The chocolate factory itself was actually an old paper mill that we made look like a confectionery factory, complete with conveyer belt, from the Sixties. We try our hardest to remain faithful to the period and it’s lovely when viewers contact us to say how much they appreciate the historical detail of the sets and props. Occasionally there’s criticism – last series we were called out for using a steam train from 1971, although we’d been unable to source one that had been in use from 1968!” Paul has his own, personal historical advisor when it comes to getting information about Oxford in the late Sixties – his mum.
“I was born and brought up here,” he reveals. “So, when I ask Mum where people went to eat in the city 50 years ago, she immediately knows the answer. I’m pushing for us to do some filming at Jesus College as it’s where my dad went to university and I’d love to have a snoop around his old rooms.”
■ Endeavour is due to start on ITV on Sunday evenings in early February. ■