Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, Anton Lesser, Sean Rigby, Chris Barnes, James Bradshaw, Sonya Cassidy, Nick Court, Louise Dylan, Jamie Glover, Richard Hawley, John Hollingsworth, Edmund Kingsley, Jack Laskey, Lloyd McGuire, Poppy Miller, Marilyn O’ Brien, Caroline O’ Neill, Lynda Rooke, Abigail Thaw, Paul Venables, Guy Williams, Clive Wood.

‘Home is where the heart lies’ as the saying goes but in Endeavour Morse’s world where exactly is home? Is it the dreaming spires that have become tainted with the blood of the dead in Oxford or is it where his father lies dying after a health scare. Home, the final episode in a series that has been well received for its look at the early life of one of television’s most endearing policemen, sees the young constable see life take a difficult turn as his loyalties are tested between the man who raised him and the man who has become like a father to him. One who taught him to fear scripture and the other who has taught him to fear the excessive criminality of the London underworld that has invaded Oxford. Only Morse could probably treat both men with the same deference whilst knowing that his own heart belongs to solving crimes in the city he once left in near disgrace.

What is initially thought of as a hit and run turns out to have much more sinister and dark overtones as the council and gangland are seen to get into bed together in return for some dodgy deals going down in the meadows that surround the city and straight shooting Fred Thursday, Morse’s mentor, gets a shock as an old adversary comes calling. In amongst all this, Morse becomes more cynical of certain practices and starts seeing the world in a much more despairing way. It is this that sets Morse apart from his colleagues and goes a long way to explaining why in later years, whilst respected for his ethic, he wasn’t particularly liked for his brusque manner in which he rubbed up, quite rightly, certain people and professions up the wrong way.

The episode’s narration also went a long way to explaining certain things about Morse in later life, not just his was with people but the way he dealt with those that he saw a common decency in. It is why his relationship with Fred Thursday, P.C. Strange and later Robbie Lewis worked so well and this episode exemplified the nature of the beast, it was the absolute trust and loyalty he commanded and required to get the job done that made the best of his friends and a nightmare for those who tainted that vision.

Whichever person it was at I.T.V. who thought of the idea of bringing the much loved detective back but in the days before John Thaw took the challenge laid down by Morse’s creator Colin Dexter and made the part his own should be thanked and offered more than a hearty handshake and one of those sometimes nauseating slaps on the back. Shaun Evans as the much less rounded Oxford City policeman has been a revelation in this first series, something that even the most ardent admirer of the original Morse series would be hard pressed to argue against.

Home was a fitting final episode to a great debut series. A second series next year, more Endeavour? It doesn’t require a detective to work out that I.T.V. knows when it sees a good thing succeeding.

Ian D. Hall