Endeavour takes you back to the 60's
Having just spent a week in the 50’s on the set of the filming of series 3 of Father Brown in the Cotswolds, you get a crash course on the complexities of the overall transformation that has to take place to create the reality for both the actors involved and the viewers at home. The incredible attention to detail from the costume designers and the art departments were on display this week as they kicked into high gear to ensure complete accuracy down to the last detail.
As PBS Masterpiece viewers have experienced time and time again, British drama has taken us to virtually every time period from Victorian England through Edwardian England and right up until today. With Endeavour, of which series 2 ended on Sunday on PBS, the task was to re-create the magical time of 60’s. After seeing first hand, I can only sit at home and marvel at the incredible talent that goes to great lengths on both of these series.
The extent to which the actors go to transport themselves into the time period is a complicated one, if not fascinating. With the daunting task of ‘becoming’ an young Morse in front of him, Shaun Evans, who brilliantly plays the young Inspector Morse, looked for inspiration no further than Monty Python. “I listened a lot to Michael Palin, who was from the north, went to Oxford and who was alive in the 60s,” he said. “That’s how I imagine Morse’s voice to be.” He also said that Scandinavian crime dramas such as The Killing and The Bridge had also left their mark on Endeavour.
Asked whether viewers could expect to see the drama move into the 1970s, Evans said: “Listen, never say never. It would be a great life for me, I suppose. But is it something you’d want, creatively? I’m not so sure.” Author Colin Dexter has insisted there can be no remakes of the Inspector Morse episodes starring John Thaw. Evans added: “I know that Colin has it in his will that no one else can play the part, which is as it should be.”
No word yet as to the future of Endeavour and whether or not a series 3 is in the works and/or commissioned, but given how series 2 ended on Sunday and the fates of DI Thursday and DC Morse so up in the air, how can there not be?
