Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, Jack Laskey, Anton Lesser, Jack Bannon, Abigail Thaw, Desomd Barrit, Lucy Boynton, James Bradshaw, Lynn Farleigh, Diane Fletcher, Nell Tiger Free, Maya Gerber, Imogen Gurney, Daniel Ings, Susy Kane, Simon Kunz Kate Lamb, Shvorne Marks, Eleanor Northcott, Caroline O’ Neill, Ian Peck, Tom Prior, Sean Rigby, Straun Rodger, Michael Shannon, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sara Vickers, Emily Warren.
It wouldn’t be the last time that Morse finds himself on the wrong end of the Heraldic Society, a murderer hiding in plain sight or the Mason’s being implicated in the plot somewhere along the line. However Nocturne, the latest in the line of episodes of Endeavour, places all of these into the criminal melting pot and adds in the young Morse’s social inadequacy and his apparent aloofness to current events as the latest case to hit the Oxford City Police’s desk sees half of the city gripped by World Cup fever.
Nocturne delves into the world of inheritance and illegitimacy, of girlish pranks in a private school and the nagging thought that a murderer has been allowed to get away with his felony for a hundred years.
With D.I. Thursday’s mind on England’s performance and not following through with Morse’s intuitions, the scene where he is watching England play and the television, in that annoying but vaguely familiar way in which television’s did in the era, crackle and ghost and fade in and out of existence, was a huge nod to the way that even a murder investigation at times might not show the full picture. It was clever writing and in which the episode came to life in what could be seen as the ultimate nursery crime.
The social anxiety that Morse feels throughout his life, his clumsiness around women is highlighted impeccably as he is forced onto a double date with P.C. Strange and two girls from the bank. He has already blown off the nurse from across the hall in which to make his future boss look good. However the anxiety he feels because of it is intensified by the appearance of D.I. Thursday’s daughter being his date for the evening. It is small touches like this that makes the connection between Endeavour and Morse such an entertaining concept.
Thankful for these two excursions away from the main plot which has been used in other ways in the Morse series, the viewer will no doubt still have enjoyed it and even at its most laborious can still be a gem of story for a Sunday evening. It certainly makes croquet look like a treacherous and grave sport!
Ian D. Hall