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 5 - Muse - Episode Review

My review of last season's finale: Harvest.

Things are changing for the Oxford Constabulary - for one thing, it's looking at a name change. Morse and Robbie Lewis's Thames Valley Police is on the way in and it's uncertain who will make the cut. Older coppers like Bright and Thursday fret about retirement; Morse worries he'll be reassigned elsewhere. Meanwhile, in come the young crowd. Sociable young constable George Fancy is Morse's new protege, a sort of proto-Lewis with an eye for the ladies. In fact, Fancy chats up the first lady he meets, Trewlove, which immediately made me guess where the episode's themes were going.

Vera Series 8 - Darkwater - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Home.

A striking location is the star of the show as authorities recover the body of a teenager from a pristine reservoir. His name was Ethan Dewley, a bullied youth whose parents, Sean and Ellie, had just split up. His mother lived in the city. Marcus suspects that, due to head injuries, Ethan's death wasn't accidental.