Sunday, February 18, 2018

Endeavour Series 5 - Cartouche - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Muse

The characters have settled in for series 5 with a slower, less edgy second episode. The story begins in a classic theater showing old mummy thrillers featuring Emil Vandemar, the fictional third star in a trifecta of horror masters (together with Karloff and Lugosi). Vandemar is preparing to show his new film, The Pharoah's Curse, also starring Jason Curwin, Veronique Carlton, and directed by Zoltan Xarkoff.

The next day, theatergoer Ronald Beavis is found dead in his bed in Jericho. He died due to strychnine poisoning from an orange squash. Beavis was a former sergeant for the Oxford City Police, but he'd recently been working in a museum of antiquities. His Egyptian co-worker, Dr. Moharram Shoukry, spends most of the episode bitter about culture appropriated from his home country, be it artifacts or cheesy movies. (My impression is that he's a bit of a stereotype - the mystical foreigner who asks questions about "the after life" and says self-importantly that he "speaks for the dead.")




Among the characters at the theater are Betty Perske, a popcorn girl (who shares Lauren Bacall's real name), Leslie Garnier, the flamboyant organist, Kenneth Bullings, a younger employee, his grandad the projectionist, Lambert Kegworth, the one-armed doorman, Commissionaire Edmund Gordon, and Armand De Vere, the theater manager who wishes the owners would sell.

The story sees the return of Eddie Nero, the crook that Thursday tried to slap with procurement charges last week. He's still a slimeball. I was surprised to find he's returning as a regular character. Is this one of the season's themes? Thursday's ongoing battle against Oxford Organized Crime?

Kenyon Asian families receive petrol bombs through their letterbox and then later, a brick through a window at a public advice center where Joan Thursday works. Combined with Shoukry's complaints about imperialism, it seems like the episode is going to have a racism theme, but instead this turns out to be a red herring. We don't escape a moral-of-the-story moment, though as Thursday and Bright's private musings about racism, nativism, and the future of the country drag on just long enough to feel preachy ("Making Britain Greater" feels like a rather clumsy reference to Donald Trump).

One of Eddie Nero's men, Liam Flynn, is operating a protection racket, squeezing cash out of a storeowner father and his daughter, Guilia Gallo. He's later stabbed to death in the street. "I didn't know better," Thursday tells Nero, "sounds like someone's trying to turn you over."

All of this is happening as our main cast are dealing with their own troubles. There's a sitcommy aspect to Adventures With the Thursday Extended Family, as Morse jumps in bed with Joan's cousin, Carol (keep it in the family, eh?), Fred is constantly embarrassed by his gauche, hard-up brother, Charlie ("What'll you have, Reg?" "Reginald."), and Strange calls Joan "Joanie" and Joan calls Strange "Jim" which is Pretty Familiar Don't You Think?? (Flashback to the time I played with the ridiculous fan theory of Joan Strange).

Cartouche isn't the greatest effort. It plods along, and parts of it don't pay off. There are some good guest performances (Donald Sumpter is always terrific - check him out in Poirot's ABC Murders), but nothing really special. The Thursday family subplot doesn't feel like it adds anything to the story. Coincidental plot devices abound. We need another scene with Joan? Someone throws a petrol bomb through the window of the place she works. We need Morse and Thursday to find out about the history of the theater? They go down that unconnected line of inquiry just because. Maybe those coincidences will tighten up as we learn more about Eddie Nero, but otherwise they just feel like a whole lot of foreshadowing for a future episode has ended up as padding here.

That said, it does have its charms. The scenes between Thursday and Joan remain smartly written, as two proud, stubborn, too-much-alike characters try and relate to one another. Everything with Jim Strange is terrific. While the Carol-and-Morse plot is a little lazy, it's not awful. Still, here's hoping for better next week.

My review of next week's episode: Passenger.

Notes:

  • Thursday going on about Laurel and Hardy is delightful - he's really quite cheerful this season.
  • Is Fancy/Trewlove gonna happen? I could ship it.
  • Joan/Strange? Definitely shipping it in a this-can't-possibly-work-but-I-want-to-see-Russell-Lewis-try kind of way.
  • How many times have we had poor Oxford detectives dragged out of burning buildings? At least twice before. Some random extra policeman pulls Morse out of his burning flat in Masonic Mysteries, and Lewis drags a comatose Hathaway out of the murderer's burning flat in Life Born of Fire


If you enjoyed this article, check out my full list of detective reviews.

If you want to keep up with great TV mysteries, follow my detective news site Murder! 'Orrible Murder! on TumblrTwitter, or Facebook.

Longish

7 comments:

  1. Thanks Hannah for another perceptive review – it was definitely worth waiting for.

    I agree that Cartouche was somewhat of a let-down compared to Muse. Having said that, the producers are doing exactly what I wish the producers of Vera would do: they’ve given the characters a home life, a few idiosyncrasies and some foibles. It makes the show so much more interesting.

    It appears that Morse and Thursday have traded places when it comes to irritability. I smiled when Endeavour knocked back a double shot of whisky while listening to Rosalind Calloway’s recording of La Traviata’s ‘Drinking Song’. I admit that Fred’s chatty Laurel and Hardy story went straight over my head; but not that he had two younger brothers – Chas and Billy – and that the best of the three never came back. Who knew?

    As amusing as Phil Daniels’ comedic performance as Charlie Thursday was – especially the brief encounter with Chief Superintendent Bright at Chez André – his Cockney accent jarred with Fred’s Received Pronunciation. It’s impossible to believe that two brothers would have such dissimilar accents, unless they were separated at a very young age and raised in different homes.

    Charlie’s Dodge Polara, on the other hand, magically transported me back to 1962. Our neighbour drove one just like it and it had a push-button automatic transmission, which I thought was the height of modernity. Sadly, his horn didn’t whistle Dixie.

    And finally, as an architect, it drives me mad that fire doors are miraculously unlocked whenever our hero needs to get into a building, but illegally padlocked whenever he needs to get out. Cheap plot devices, IMO; Russell Lewis knows better than that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If I cared to, I could probably come up with a barely plausible reason for De Vere to prevent people entering/exiting the building to stop the fire, but that feels like a real stretch.

      I mean, I guess I knew Thursday was R.P. but I assumed he had some sort of London dialect. He does sound dramatically different than Charlie. And I can't imagine Fred Thursday putting in the time and effort to lose his natural accent. I might could see Charlie putting on a Cockney accent to give himself a roguish air.

      That horn whistling Dixie was magnificently tacky and made me love the other Thursdays even more.

      Delete
  2. Enjoyed reading this - and I totally agree - and it could have been more remarkable as the plot seemed watered down. They seemed to go retro but they didn't know how this would be significant within the story. One thing is The Mummy, The Fire, The WWWI ex-Hero all have something in common - their time has come and gone. Anyhow -good read Hannah and Valdemar** did add something to this episode - Donald Sumpter. By the way - which episode will explain what really did happen w/Joan Thursday and Morse(?) I skipped a few. Let me know - thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did shaun evans play valdemar in movie clips at beginning? Why wasn't commissare in opening scenes? Was mystery on pbs edited for time?

    ReplyDelete
  4. A comment. When Thursday and Morse spoke to the person who operated the projector he spoke of Tobruk (Australian and New Zealand troops were at Tobruk) and said that the Germans the Afrika Corps had flamethrowers on their tanks Panzers. Don't know if that is historically correct, but it was interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Why did Gordon get Valdemar to sign his autograph book "To Leslie"? And why did he then add the so-called cartouche of Akhenaten, which was not Ahenaten's cartouche, btw? Would he really give away his autograph book, full of autographs collected over many years? How would it being found in Garnier's possession incriminate Garnier or throw the police off the scent of Gordon? Would Gordon really have any idea of what any pharaoh's cartouche looked like? Also Giulia's name was misspelled as 'Guilia' on the list of people who attended the cinema and in the credits. Since she was played by an Italian (judging by the name) you would think she could have corrected the error.

    ReplyDelete

WARNING: Blogger sometimes eats comments - copy before you post.