ENDEAVOUR MORSE IS JUST NOT INSPECTOR MORSE
I’m no purist. When the “Endeavour” British detective television series was announced eight years ago, to be a prequel to the hugely popular “Inspector Morse” series of the 1980’s/90’s (ranked in some Brit polls as the best all-time TV mystery series), I did not expect, for example, a physical resemblance between Inspector John Thaw and Endeavour Shaun Evans, even adjusted for age difference. And there isn’t much. Nor, unlike the sequel/spin-off “Lewis” series (featuring the same Kevin Whately as Morse’s former sidekick Sargent Lewis, now an Inspector too), did I expect a seamless transition in the ‘storybook,’ with the many snippets of Morse’s younger years as related throughout the Inspector series to be faithfully re-enacted for the Endeavour series. There is no “Pagan” Morse (“Deceived By Flight”) in Endeavour, no broken marriage engagement with the future Susan Fallon (“Dead On Time”).
But even allowing for a screenwriter’s necessity of a fresh timeline, after 7 seasons of Endeavour it is just impossible to imagine how Shaun Evan’s Sargent Morse could ever become, ten to fifteen Thames Valley Station police career years later, John Thaw’s Inspector Morse.
Morse’s affinity for opera, drink, and crosswords are well respected with Endeavour, though never actually explained as to origin. Endeavour just bought that house too in season 6, and I bet he will get the signature red Jag Mark 2 in next year’s final season 8. But it’s the very natures of the Sargent/Inspector Morse characters that are impossible to match up.
Inspector Morse is crusty and opinionated, and often haughty in berating poor Lewis for some mis-step — a borderline curmudgeon. While the younger Endeavour is quizzical and frequently understanding, even empathetic, if also a bit arrogant. What happened?
And whereas the Inspector, in every modest action sequence during that series’ 33 episodes, is physically fumbling if not inept — and refuses to handle a gun, the Sargent is almost an action hero. Among a number of rough encounters, the Sargent saves a nuclear power station from a terrorist meltdown (“Harvest” which explains how the later Inspector Morse earned his George Medal), leads a ‘high noon’ showdown with his station’s corrupt cop and thug associates in a quarry (“Deguello”), and now — in the series certainly most remarkable episode to date just broadcast in the US — engages in a penultimate shootout in Venice (“Zenana”). What happened?
It is “Zenana” — the culminating episode 3 of season 7’s multi-chapter themed plotline, that really bakes the cake. Young Endeavour falls assuredly and passionately in love, and then adultery, and then betrayal, and then … well, to avoid spoilers, let’s just say the climatic opera aria-synced outcome of this Great Love is … totally over the top!
(Which is terrific television melodrama — if you’re going to go there, never hold back!)
While instead our luckless-in-love Inspector Morse, purportedly the same man only some years later, is so lacking is confidence with the many engaging female protagonists he encounters, so self-conscious and socially bumbling … What happened?
No, this all doesn’t really matter. Sargent Endeavour is a great character and “Endeavour” a great TV detective genre series on its own merits. It doesn’t matter that This Guy could never credibly evolve somehow into That Guy. It might have been fun to see a highly accurate prequel faithfully replicating the original’s backstory and presenting a psychological study of where a young man starts to wind up like a certain middle-aged guy we know from before.
But … this Sargent Endeavour Morse is just not that “just call me” (Inspector) Morse. So be it. It’s still good stuff.
