Morse\u2019s last crossword completed, Thursday\u2019s last pint poured, Superintendent Bright\u2019s last cigarette smoked, Win\u2019s last sandwiches eaten\u2026 We must not weep that it has gone, but instead rejoice that it has been.<\/p>\n
The ninth and final series of Endeavour<\/a> is a sweet sorrow, bringing down the curtain on a series that began simply as Inspector Morse<\/a>\u2019s origin story and evolved into something so much more. But while its millions of fans may mourn, it seems the show\u2019s two biggest stars are not just philosophical but ready to let go.<\/p>\n \u201cThe story is all, and when it\u2019s told, it\u2019s told,\u201d says Shaun Evans<\/a> of the title role that he has played since 2012. \u201cThat time was coming, and you don\u2019t want to repeat yourself. You shouldn\u2019t stay just because it\u2019s comfortable. You owe it to the audience to do it well and then call it a day.\u201d<\/p>\n It seems, just as we\u2019ve watched young Endeavour Morse evolve on screen, Evans<\/a> has inevitably done the same. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like that person any more,\u201d he agrees. \u201cI don\u2019t think I can honestly keep doing that job because I\u2019ve changed, I feel different.\u201d Is he referring to Morse\u2019s work ethic in favour of a personal life? \u201cMy hunger remains, wanting to get things done and make work, but that solitude, that difficulty connecting, I\u2019ve worked through.\u201d<\/p> For Roger Allam<\/a>, putting Detective Chief Inspector Fred Thursday<\/a>\u2019s fedora permanently on the hook is all part of the nature of showbusiness, an industry he has hopped around with seemingly effortless panache for four decades.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always been drawn to being able to do strongly contrasting things,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen this was first offered and they wanted a commitment of three years, my heart sank and I nearly didn\u2019t do it. Two years seemed doable in my head. Cleverly, the execs just kept renewing it, one year at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, even the poker-faced Allam confesses that, when it came to filming his final scenes, he had a moment. \u201cYou\u2019re just doing your work, but then it creeps in and the experience of it \u2013 \u2018This is the last time I\u2019ll be in Bright\u2019s office and that set will be broken up\u2026\u2019 \u2013 that\u2019s very moving.\u201d<\/p>\n If last summer\u2019s filming in and around Oxford felt particularly poignant, it was something both men dealt with in their own particular ways. Allam found himself at a \u201csort of wrap party\u201d at a bar in Islington, north London (\u201cone of those places where you have to shout to make yourself heard\u201d), while Evans embarked on a far more Morse-like enterprise.<\/p>\n \u201cI was there [Oxford] until the very last day, and that was on my own. It was perfect in a way because it meant that I had the chance to say goodbye alone. I went to Italy the very next day and enrolled on a language course, because I knew I\u2019d have lots of energy, and I wanted to do something completely different to distract me while I slowly came back down.\u201d<\/p>\n Time, too, to reflect on a TV triumph that could have gone so wrong, trying to meet the high standards of drama instilled by the original Morse. Instead, Endeavour came to be as much loved as its predecessor \u2013 with writer Russell Lewis mining his knowledge of Colin Dexter\u2019s books to paint a picture of 1960s and 70s Oxford through the prism of police work, against a backdrop of real-life events, such as World Cup victory and Apollo landings. But as every fan knows, Endeavour\u2019s not really about any of that. Instead, it\u2019s about the characters and their rich hinterlands.<\/p>\n Allam believes it\u2019s the contrasting personal lives of Morse and Thursday that gives the series its unique punch. Sure enough, for years, we\u2019ve watched Thursday\u2019s wife Win handing him his sandwiches (Monday: cheese and pickle, Tuesday: luncheon meat) and telling him: \u201cCome home safe\u201d. But while he enjoys simple pleasures, Thursday is no simple man. Inspired by the men he met of his father\u2019s generation, Allam carries the inspector\u2019s war experience into every scene.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t a professional soldier although he had skills, he was very good at fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n The actor chuckles, remembering one of his favourite lines from early on in the series. \u201cConfronted by a gang of hoodlums, Thursday tells them, \u2018I didn\u2019t tramp halfway round Europe to come back to a country run by spivs and chancers like you.’\u201d<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s Morse, the younger man, standing with one foot in the Thursdays\u2019 dining room, palpably hankering after all they have, yet seemingly ready to sacrifice prospects of family and other close relationships in the pursuit of truth and justice. Is Morse our great comfort, the solitary crusader who remains awake and alert so we all may sleep? Evans isn\u2019t convinced.<\/p>\n \u201cThis desire to sacrifice everything for your work, it\u2019s actually masking something else, something more difficult to look at about yourself,\u201d he muses. \u201cSo you channel all your energy and enthusiasm into being a great detective, when actually the more difficult thing to say is, \u2018Why haven\u2019t I got a relationship?\u2019 I think that\u2019s all going on with this character, rather than being a completely altruistic character.\u201d<\/p>\n Besides the great performances from the two leads and across the board \u2013 every fan I know identifies a different moment when they took the initially brusque Chief Superintendent Bright (Anton Lesser) to their heart \u2013 it\u2019s the elegiac quality of Endeavour that sets it apart. As well as the cars, the suits, the skirts of the period, the mood of the piece is that of a society still recovering from the war, but on the brink of new experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cMembers of the younger generation in the cast would comment on things,\u201d says Allam of the attention to period detail. \u201cWith no mobile phones, you\u2019d need a book of maps to get about. You needed a separate camera to take photographs. All those things we now take for granted, and people find it interesting. It wasn\u2019t necessarily a more innocent time, but interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n Evans acknowledges, too, the lure of the past, even if it\u2019s a fantasised version: \u201cWe all hanker for simpler lives. We have the speed [now] with which we can do things, but it comes at the cost of connecting to the simple things \u2013 of somebody making you a sandwich so you\u2019re nourished. It\u2019s not big, extravagant gestures, it\u2019s the simple things of looking after one another. There seems to be a nostalgia for that.\u201d<\/p>\n As for his own simple pleasures, Evans describes \u201cmy first coffee and notebook of a morning\u201d. He expands: \u201cApart from health, family and people, a couple of hours to write notes in my notebook, go out with my little camera, take some pictures, go to my darkroom to develop them. Being creative and having the agency over my own creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n When I ask Allam the same question he demurs, \u201cI quite like a sandwich, perhaps not luncheon meat.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/02\/endeavourseries9film105-6cc8868.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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