Endeavour

Sarah Vine said ITV's new Endeavour is 'just really good, solid, old-fashioned crime drama', praising Shaun Evans for making the role of Endeavour Morse ...

How he – and his daughter Joan (Sara Vickers), Endeavour’s one-time love interest – came to be erased from the future life of Britain’s most beloved detective is a conundrum the series creator, Russell Lewis, will no doubt have wrestled long and hard with. Presented by Stephen Fry in full stately flow, the best part of this documentary/personal pilgrimage is the footage of Belinfante, interviewed in the mid-90s shortly before her death. Roger Allam is superb as DCI Fred Thursday, an old-fashioned sort of cop, gruff around the edges but a fundamentally excellent egg who likes to refer to his days in ‘The Smoke’ and knows a ‘wrong ’un’ when he sees one. But in the end it turned out pretty well, thanks to a combination of clever casting and if-it-ain’t-broke-why-fix-it writing. When Endeavour first aired, back in 2012 with a pilot set in 1965, there was much pearl-clutching at the prospect of usurping the original. Set in 1972 (with corresponding language and man-made fibres), it will ultimately deposit viewers at the door of the original show, based on the novels of Colin Dexter and starring John Thaw as DCI Morse with Kevin Whately as DS Lewis.