Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, Sean Rigby, Anton Lesser, Dakota Blue Richards, Lewis Peek, James Bradshaw, Abigail Thaw, Sara Vickers, Caroline O’ Neil, Sam Clement, Phil Daniels, Madeleine Worrall, Caroline Martin, Aldo Maland, Jojo Macari, Lilly Lesser, Michael Simkins, Felix Scott, Andrew Buckley, Barnaby Taylor, Mark Arden, Louis Strong, Thomas Panay, Anson Boon, David James Fray.
If there is ever an emotive subject other than murder to bring into the world of the armchair detective, then it surely has to be the prospect of spies and counter espionage, the two realms of dark forces combined making a seemingly perfect storm in which to pit the wits against and to see who comes out on top; the writer or the viewer.
Endeavour is arguably the most logical place in the current crop of television detective programmes in which to bring the memory of the spy rings of the 60s back into public view, which to familiarise once again with the likes of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt and the espionage and passing of state secrets carried out by the Cambridge set after the war. If it was the Masons that did for the older Morse as he tackled crime in Oxfordshire, then it might just be the quiet men in the shadows who will become the bane of existence for the young Endeavour.
Quartet though is not just the sense of danger inside the Oxford Colleges, the death of a man taking part in a televised series of fun and games in the city leading to MI5 cracking open the D-notices, it comes along with the escalation of organised and violent crime in the city, a situation that is intolerable to the older brigade such as Chief Inspector Thursday.
It is this combination of cases, of an established order being broken down from within and a new, more terrifying, approach as the dawn of the 1970s appears that captures the viewer’s attention in this particular episode, the power of intimidation, of the wealth of knowledge that is at the hands of a select few and how both those institutions are used to threaten and coerce into either defending the realm, or seeking to overthrow it.
An episode of great mystery, Quartet seeks to throw light into the shaded and dark world that envelopes any great institution, of taking on the fact that crime isn’t just theft of property and murder, but when it is against the state that many get twitchy and demanding more severe justice.
Ian D. Hall