Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, Anton Lesser, James Bradshaw, Nigel Cooke, Jonathan Coy, Jessica Ellerby, Pooky Quesnel, Sean Rigby, Abigail Thaw, Sarah Vickers, Philip Martin Brown, Jessie Buckley, Liam Garrigan, Beth Goddard, Richard Herdman, Jack Bannon, Michael Hobbs, Celyn Jones, Jack Laskey, Tieva Lovelle, William Mannering, Schorne Marks, Caroline O’Neill, Samuel Oatley, James Palmer, Jamie Parker, Emily Plumtree, Nick Waring, David Westhead, Colin Dexter.
The peak into the world of Ccrime drama that seems to dominate the British television schedules would not be the same without the treasure that is Inspector Morse or his younger incarnation Endeavour.
The jewel in the crown of I.T.V. that is the Oxford Police force has seen the area having its crimes solved by either the crossword solving, battle hardened detective or his loyal Sergeant/later Inspector Lewis across four different decades but perhaps Endeavour is a step that many of the fans are feeling so comfortable with that it hardly merits anything but a whoop of joy that the programme has made a return for a second series.
The first episode of the new series, Trove, sees the young Morse battle against demons in his head after surviving being shot in the last series. The rehabilitation of the officer and as a trusted friend to Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, played with his usual aplomb by the inscrutable and virtuoso Roger Allam, will take time but whilst viewers have seen glimpses of the man to come, played in the Morse series by the much missed John Thaw, the troubled but analytical mind of the keen detective starts to show more intensely and the ability to get under the nose of certain members of so called clubs starts to become a wonderfully captured image.
With a series of events that to others are completely unrelated, Morse sees a connection and in that spark the whole episode takes in elements of the future life of the detective to marvellous effect. It is writing of the greatest order of which is new but also highly deferential to the past which frames the idea behind the series.
With Shaun Evans once more reprising the role of the young Morse, fans of the show will certainly feel at home once more in the surrounds of the dreaming spires of Oxford, the high death rate that makes only Midsomer seem a more dangerous place in which to live and die in and of course the academic culture that makes the smallest puzzle in solving the crime a joy to watch.
A welcome return to an old favourite!
Ian D. Hall