Marking the 30th anniversary of Morse on ITV, detective drama Endeavour returns for a fourth season.
Reprising his role as the young Endeavour Morse, Shauns Evans stars alongside Roger Allam (The Missing) as mentor, Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, in four new complex cases.
Season 4 begins in the summer of 1967, barely a fortnight having passed since the events of Season 3’s finale, and we find Oxford’s finest picking up the pieces of their lives, both personal and professional. Whilst Thursday and wife, Win, struggle to process the departure of both their daughter Joan and son, Sam, who has joined the army, Endeavour waits nervously to hear the result of his Sergeant’s exam.
Throwing himself into his work to mask the heartache of Joan leaving, Endeavour is quickly consumed by his duties with an array of new, perplexing cases landing on his desk.
Order Season 4 on DVD on Amazon here.
Episode 1: ‘Game’
Sunday 8 January 2017, 8pm
The ‘white heat’ of technology takes centre stage in the first film, as Lovelace College is taken over by a team of research scientists who are developing a ‘thinking’ machine to equal and even outstrip the capabilities of man’s own mind.
As a Russian academic prepares to do battle with the Joint Computing Nexus (JCN or Jason for short) in a game of chess, the Cold War is played out on a chequered field and Endeavour and Thursday are plunged into their most perilous, baffling and darkly terrifying case to date.
Throwing himself into his work to mask the heartache of Joan’s departure, Endeavour is quickly consumed by his duties when one of the research team is found drowned near Magdalen Bridge. Assuming it to be a suicide on first inspection, the circumstances become more suspicious when two more victims are also found drowned nearby in East Cowley Baths.
Is there more to the deaths than meets the eye?
Episode 2: ‘Canticle’
Sunday 15 January 2017, 8pm
The so called ‘permissive society’ comes under the spotlight as Endeavour is tasked with protecting conservative social activist, Joy Pettybon, after she receives a death threat while visiting Oxford to promote her ‘Keep Britain Decent’ campaign.
Also staying near Oxford and recording their new album are a band called The Wildwood and their manager Ralph Spender, who is desperate to maintain their squeaky-clean image in the media spotlight. However, their harmony is disrupted when the body of local brickie, Barry Finch, is discovered in the middle of Oxford and it transpires that Finch was working at Maplewick Hall, where they band are staying, before he died.
Delving into the social revolution of the time, Endeavour finds himself caught in the crossfire of bitter liberalising forces and deep reactionary conservatism both fighting for the consciences of the British people in 1967. And in this collision of two worlds, Endeavour must explore all avenues before more killings occur.
Episode 3: ‘Lazaretto’
Sunday 22 January 2017, 8pm
Endeavour is tasked with protecting prisoner and criminal informant Terry Bakewell whilst he’s undergoing treatment in Cowley General Hospital. However, when Chief Superintendent Bright is rushed to hospital with a perforated peptic ulcer, criminal and policeman find themselves neighbours on the ward.
As Bright’s condition remains touch and go, Endeavour is drawn into the mystery of the ward, with rumours circulating amongst the patients about the “curse of Bed 10” where an increasing number of patients have unexpectedly died over the past few months.
Initially dismissing the “curse” as coincidence, Endeavour interest is piqued when the wife of a former patient of Bed 10 is found dead. With allegations from her of theft made against the ward, Endeavour starts to dig deeper to find out the truth behind the hospital’s mystery curse.
Episode 4: ‘Harvest’
Sunday 29 January 2017, 8pm
When a body is found in Bramford Mere, a marshland outside of Oxford, everyone assumes they are the remains of Dr Matthew Laxman, an Oxford botanist who mysteriously disappeared near the site five years earlier.
The team’s hopes are dashed when Dr de Bryn reveals the body is actually thousands of years old, but Morse and Thursday suspect there may still be clues about the missing botanist when a modern pair of glasses is also found near the body.
Picking up where the last investigation left off, the pair set about interviewing the curious residents of nearby Bramford Village who are preparing for the Autumn equinox.
Enquiries also lead Morse to the local nuclear power station, Bramford B and Laxman’s mentor, Donald Bagley, who is a key figure in the birth of nuclear science in Britain. With events at the power station shrouded in secrecy, Morse suspects something dark at play.
Order Season 4 on DVD on Amazon here.
Watch the Season 4 trailer…
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