Roger Allam (The Thick of It) returns as Endeavour’s senior partner, Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, while Sean Rigby takes on the role of a young PC Strange – the character who appeared in the original Morse series, played by James Grout.
James Bradshaw is also back as Dr Max Debryn and John Thaw’s daughter Abigail will make further guest appearances as Dorothea Frazil. Other cast members include Anton Lesser (The Hour) as Chief Supt Reginald Bright and Jack Laskey (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) as DS Peter Jakes.
> Buy Series 1 on DVD on Amazon.
> Buy the complete Inspector Morse boxset on Amazon.
Episode 1: ‘Girl’
Sunday 14 April 2013, 8pm
When a young Secretarial student, Margaret Bell, dies suddenly at home, Endeavour senses there is more to the case than the preliminary medical verdict of ‘heart attack’.
Now working out of Cowley Police station, Endeavour has unofficially assumed the role of ‘bagman’ to DI Fred Thursday. However, newly arrived Superintendent Bright has other ideas, and when a respectable GP is found shot dead in a public lavatory, Endeavour’s outlandish theories soon see him relegated to General Duties.
Humiliated and humbled, Endeavour has to investigate from the sidelines. Through a puzzling haze of deceit and misdirection, involving an Oxford physicist who worked on the atomic bomb, and the fate of a vulnerable single mother, Endeavour is forced to question Thursday’s orders and risk his career to avert a family tragedy.
Episode 2: ‘Fugue’
Sunday 21 April 2013, 8pm
An unknown menace stalks Oxford, strikingfear into the hearts of its citizens. At first glance, the killer appears to be just another deranged lunatic, striking at random, but Detective Constable Endeavour Morse uncovers an underlying method to the madness. The elaborate staging of the crimes suggests the killer shares Endeavour’s passion for opera…
While Oxford City Police scramble to find the next potential victim, it seems that Endeavour has finally met his intellectual match. As the body count increases, letters containing cryptic clues, goading the police for their failures, are sent to the Oxford Mail. Only a detective of Endeavour’s intellect can break them.
An emotionally operatic epic, ‘Fugue’ combines the very best of the original Morse series (‘Masonic Mysteries;) with a dazzling resolution that will push Endeavour to fringes of his own sanity, as he is drawn into an elaborate scheme; in which he is destined to become an integral part.
Episode 3: ‘Rocket’
Sunday 28 April 2013, 8pm
The prospect of a visit to Oxford by HRH Princess Margaret, who is to unveil the British Imperial Electric Company’s latest weapon of mass destruction – the ‘Standfast’ Mk II missile – at a Cowley factory, has put a spring in the step of Chief Superintendent Bright.
Endeavour, still languishing on General Duties, is excluded from the event. But no sooner has the ceremony drawn to a close than he finds himself deeply embroiled in the affairs of the factory and its owners, the darkly dysfunctional Broom family. For an unpopular worker, Percy Malleson, has been found murdered in a secluded area of the shop floor.
One of his Malleson’s colleagues, Lenny Frost, falls suspect – there is bad blood between them resulting from industrial accident. Bright, under pressure from above, is eager for the case to be resolved as quickly and quietly as possible. But Endeavour, brought into the intoxicating orbit of Alice Vexin, who carries a torch for him from their student days, remains unconvinced this is such an open-and-shut case. Endeavour’s dogged pursuit of justice offends both Bright and the factory’s top brass; as he exhumes secrets that many would rather have remained long buried.
Episode 4: ‘Home’
Sunday 5 May 2013, 8pm
As the shadow of East End villainy falls upon Oxford, a hit and run accident claims the life of an eminent Classics Professor. Endeavour & Thursday must each face their past. Not all stories have a happy ending.
Oxford lies in the grip of a bitter winter. Endeavour crams for his upcoming Sergeant’s Exam, but a road traffic accident sets events in motion which will lead to the Moonlight Rooms nightclub and a blood reckoning. The hit and run victim is an Oxford professor who died at odds with his peers over the fate of Booth Hill – a potentially lucrative parcel of College owned land.
The case is complicated by the appearance of Thursday’s old gangland enemy, Vic Kasper, whose arrival in Oxford carries a direct threat to all Thursday holds dear. Endeavour is drawn back to Lincolnshire to visit his ailing father, leaving Thursday to face his demons alone. However, when a cigarette girl working at the Moonlight Rooms is found dead, Endeavour must choose between filial duty and the need to protect Thursday, whose righteous anger has led him into a dark and potentially fatal place.
> Buy Series 1 on DVD on Amazon.
> Buy the complete Inspector Morse boxset on Amazon.
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