Morse and the Last Endeavour marks end of a 50 year journey

Morse and the Last Endeavour
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Cast your mind back – if you can – to 1975.

It’s the year in which Margaret Thatcher became the first female leader of any UK political party, the Moorgate tube train crash killed 43 people, the Watergate scandal rumbled on, Microsoft was founded, the film Jaws was released and the Vietnam war ended with the fall of Saigon.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Oxford, a major British cultural figure was about to be born when Colin Dexter, a former teacher then working for the city’s famous University, published Last Bus to Woodstock, the first of 13 novels featuring his most enduring character, Inspector Endeavour Morse.

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Dexter had previously only ever published text books, but had begun dabbling with mystery stories during a family holiday in 1972. He eventually devised a police detective who shared many of his own passions – including cryptic crosswords, English literature, cask ale and Wagner – although we hope, for his wife Dorothy and their two children’s sake, Dexter wasn’t quite as curmudgeonly as his creation.

The subsequent books did well and then, twelve years after his literary debut, a TV series based on Morse’s cases appeared on ITV. John Thaw, no stranger to crime drama after making his name in The Sweeney, was cast in the lead role, although the cerebral detective and the punch-them-first, ask-questions-later Jack Regan couldn’t have been more different.

The programme was a huge hit, with Thaw bowing out in 2000’s The Remorseful Day; 13 million tuned in to see the character breathe his last. Some of the most moving scenes involved Kevin Whateley as Morse’s long-standing (and suffering) sidekick Sergeant Robbie Lewis. In the novels, Dexter made him an ageing Welshman; on TV he was a younger Geordie who took centre stage in his own spin-off sequel – the author was said to approve of the change – from 2006 until 2015.

It appeared that was the end of the Morse franchise, until a prequel, with Shaun Evans as a young version of the detective and Roger Allam as his mentor, Fred Thursday, hit our screens in 2012. Earlier on Sunday evening, the final episode was due to air, perhaps laying to rest the character once and for all, at least for now.

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To mark the end of an almost 50-year journey on page and screen, ITV1 is broadcasting a special one-off documentary about Morse and his legacy. All members of Endeavour’s main cast will appear, including Abigail Thaw, John’s eldest daughter, who plays newspaper editor Dorothea Frazil; she reveals how she got the role.

Whately is also featured, describing the impact Morse has had on his career, while Evans describes both starring in and directing episodes of Endeavour.

Hopefully there’s a tribute or two to the man who created Morse too.

“I’ve been very lucky,” Dexter would later claim when asked about his literary career. “Lucky with my publisher, lucky with the television people, lucky to have had John Thaw playing Morse.”

Really, those of us who have enjoyed Dexter’s books and their TV spin-offs should raise a glass to him as they say farewell, because we’re the lucky ones.

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