Endeavour Series 7 - Zenana - Review

My review of the previous episode: Raga. 

Is it the 1980s yet? I feel like I just lived an entire decade in one episode. Rocketing from one plot twist to another, with red herrings galore and operatic aspirations, Zenana is certainly never dull. But is it good?

The story starts with yet another tow-path murder. Thursday is furious. It's the young woman he'd warned in the previous episode, Bridget Mulcahy. He has some strong words for Morse, who remained convinced that Professor Blish was the tow-path killer. The chef, Tony Jakkobsen, was killed in an unrelated incident, Morse thought. But with Bridget's murder, it seems undeniable that the killer is still at large.

Endeavour Series 7 - Raga - Review

My review of the previous episode: Oracle

If I felt that last week's episode left some arcs oddly unresolved, this week's story shows why that was. We find the main cast embroiled with the same conflicts which started in episode one. Endeavour is still being courted by Ludo Talenti - figuratively? the man does seem very flirty - and certainly literally by Violetta Talenti. I'm almost suspicious that Ludo and Violetta are setting Morse up somehow. Ludo clearly seems to have some ulterior motives for renewing his friendship with Morse.

Endeavour Series 7 - Oracle - Review

My review of the previous season finale: Degüello

For the first time since 1992, we are in a Morse episode set in a different country. Morse is in Venice, falling for a pretty Italian woman named Violetta. He's not there long, but it starts the story - and the new decade (1970s, 2020s) - off on a romantic foot.

Meanwhile, in Oxford, foul play is afoot. A woman, Molly Andrews, is murdered on a towpath. Thursday is convinced the killer was Carl Sturgis - the dead girl's boyfriend, which Morse calls into question fairly quickly on his return to duty. Bright isn't alarmed, but he assigns Morse to revisit the case, which creates conflict between Thursday and his former protege.

Endeavour Series 6 - Degüello - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Confection.

"Do you think a golem's wandering around Oxford?"

Alas, there's not. There's usually a wild card episode in Endeavour seasons, but Degüello doesn't quite live up to the promise of that dialogue! That said, it's one of the most satisfying conclusions the show has produced in a while, largely because it feels like, well, a conclusion.

Endeavour Series 6 - Confection - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Apollo.

The first body is an overdose. Max and Morse are standing alongside when Strange blunders up and says, "Puked 'is guts up, then?" It's a reminder of Strange's crusade to find Fancy's killer, which plays a back-up role in an episode that's full to the brim with dead bodies. It's also a chance for Max to get in a zinger, as he often does when Strange discusses puke. ("What a lyrical child you must have been, sergeant," is still my favorite, but "Been at the Keats again, sergeant?" ain't bad.)

Russell Lewis had to be frustrated that Inspector Morse already had an episode named Happy Families, because that's the theme of the story more than anything. Unhappy families, of course. There aren't any fireworks (no tigers or haunted houses to be found here, as there usually are in the season's third episode), but this is a strong meat-and-potatoes story which, like last week's story, manages to land quite a few serious character-based punches.

Endeavour Series 6 - Apollo - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Pylon.

We've seen Shaun Evans in front of the camera, but this is our first chance to see what he can do behind it. It turns out, the answer is: quite a lot. After a rather functional finale established the new status quo, Endeavour finds time to dig into real character conflict in this insightful, thematically rich second episode that balances all of its subplots beautifully.

The story starts with Adam Drake - a snarky jerk - and his girlfriend, Christine Chase. They attend a party with Drake's colleagues - the Humbolts and Wingqvists. Adam and Christine's bodies are discovered the next day at the scene of an apparent wreck. 

Meanwhile, Thursday is assaulted by some thugs and on doctor's orders he's put on light duties, which means he and Morse - newly reassigned to Castlegate CID - investigate the wreck together. Christine's body has been disturbed, and it looks like she died before the "accident."

Endeavour Series 6 - Pylon - Episode Review

 My review of the previous season finale: Icarus.

There's a certain ineffable quality about Endeavour. I always feel like I've visited a far-off country when I return to the series, regardless of my critiques of individual episodes (this is me obliquely referring to my grumpy review of last season's finale). Why is that? There's a good dollop of nostalgia, certainly, as this episode's beginning demonstrates (C.S. Bright stars in a re-creation of a classic British road-crossing PSA). But there's also an air of lost grandeur - a Brideshead Revisited wistfulness which laments changing institutions and lost innocence.

Both Inspector Morse and Endeavour are full of that emotion. Pylon is as well, though it ultimately tries too hard to be too many things to fully cohere as a story. Nevertheless, it's another fresh start for the show, and it reminded me anew the reasons to appreciate it.

I'll get into those later in this review. First, we need to talk about the Morsestache. 

Endeavour Series 5 - Icarus - Episode review

My review of the previous episode: Quartet.

That's it for Cowley, then. Mr. Bright begins the episode announcing the station's closure, to a welcome return of an opera soundtrack. The news confirms Fred in his plans to retire. Fancy, in love with Trewlove, has bought a ring. Trewlove wants to transfer to the Yard.

At first, I thought Morse was taking Thursday's retirement so hard that he'd quit the police force, but it turns out he's going undercover as a teacher at a boy's school. He's not alone. Trewlove is along to play Mrs. Morse, a narrative stretch that does actually push the characters in interesting directions, but still feels implausible.

Endeavour Series 5 - Quartet - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Colours.

There's no real reason for all of the Thames Valley crew to be at the Jeux Sans Frontières, a weird game show pitting European teams against each other. Are they there for security? I mean, that's for beat cops, not detectives. I can't imagine Morse or Max attend such events for fun, especially Max, who's fully decked out in his usual bow-tie and suit. In any case, it's lucky the team are there to immediately respond when the German "Giant" is assassinated by the Swiss. A little boy is caught in the cross-fire. The Swiss giant disappears. International incident, here we come.

Endeavour Series 5 - Colours - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Passenger. 

I didn't see that beginning coming.

Endeavour Series 5 - Passenger - Episode Review

 My review of the previous episode: Cartouche.

"It won't do, Morse. It won't bloody do." 

If I was a wrongdoer and heard Fred Thursday speak those words, I'd be quaking in my boots. It means things are serious. And indeed they are.

Passenger begins with the usual intercut scenes. A trainspotter watches an engine whoosh into the station while a giggling couple cavort in bed. Meanwhile, some thugs hijack a lorry, brutally striking down the driver.

Back at the office, the pressure is on for officers to prove their worth to division. Thursday is put in a managerial role as two obviously smarmy bastards from Robbery arrive to assist with the lorry investigation: D.I. Ronnie Box and D.S. Patrick Dawson.

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.")

Endeavour Series 4 - Harvest - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Lazaretto.

In 1962, botanist Matthew Laxman went missing. In the first minutes of Harvest an atmospheric black-and-white flashback shows us his final moments, as he picked up a man on the side of the road, swerved to avoid a lorry and...black screen.

Back to the present. Relatively speaking.

It's 1967, and Courtney College archaeologists have just discovered a 2000-year-old body in Bramford Mere, close to where Laxman disappeared. Morse has a theory about the old body's cause of death, but the more pressing matter is that a pair of glasses were discovered close by that could have been Laxman's. Thursday was dissatisfied with the investigation last time around ("County," he grumbles, but he also suspects his previous bagman D.S. Lott wasn't "as thorough as he could have been") so he drags Morse along and they start to interview relatives.

Endeavour Series 4 - Lazaretto - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Canticle.

"I suppose everyone's got their own secret sadness, 'aven't they?" 

"I suppose. What's yours?" 

"Flat feet."

Lazaretto begins quite simply, for a Morse episode. Perhaps thanks to director Börkur Sigþórsson (a Scandinavian, if there ever was one), the episode has a bare simplicity and white light that's unusual for the usually warm, cozy show. The color palette reflects the sterile hospital at the center of this week's plot. It takes Morse and co. a while to get there however, because they've another death to attend to first.