Posted by Sari
Today there won't be any cider or beer, thanks to the chinese stomach bug my sister thought fully brought over from Shanghai. But have a TV-series:
Endeavour is the second spin-off from ITV's Morse which in turn was based on Colin Dexter's popular detective novels about a grouchy, borderline alcoholic DI solving crimes in Oxford. YLE has been showing it and is at the second to last episode at the moment, I think. I liked Morse and I loved the first spin-off, Lewis, so it should be right down my alley, but I am a little conflicted about the series.
There is lot to like. The period detail is amazingly good, Shaun Evans is excellent as the young disillusioned romantic and there are some blindingly good moments in the scripts. The best thing in the series, however is the relationship between Morse and his inspector, Fred Thursday (Roger Allam). I might mentioned somewhere that I love mentoring dynamics inrelationships, and this one hits all the right notes.
However, the plots and especially the internal dynamics of the police station are handled lazily so that the episodes start running together instead of standing out from each other: the blustering, ironically named chief superintendent Bright gets really old really fast. The worst problem – for me – is that the series is basically a tragedy of sorts. Every one who has seen or read Morse knows how his life will turn out, so watching young Endeavour trying to find his place in the world and forge relationships is actually quite painful and frustrating.
But I'll keep watching, just for Fred Thursday.
Eating Muffins 