Endeavour II Production Notes

Foreword
by Writer & Executive Producer, Russell Lewis
1966… And all that.
The opening bars of the second movement of Ein deutches Requiem by Johannes
Brahms – which plays across the visual overture of FILM 1: TROVE – set the tone for
ENDEAVOUR SERIES II: 1966. Intimations of mortality and an aching melancholy.
The choir sings words taken from scripture – specifically, 1 Peter 1:24 -­‐-­‐ 'Denn alles
Fleisch, es ist wie Gras' – 'For all flesh, it is as grass'. A fitting memento mori for
Endeavour Morse as he deals with the aftershocks of his own brush with death. Thus
we find him, four months on from being shot, awaiting his appointment with the Force
Medical Examiner who will decide if he is fit enough to return to work.
Whether he is indeed fully restored to health – in mind as well as body – is the
question which troubles friend and mentor Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, and
informs the unfolding drama…
1966… It was a very good year. The last hurrah of the old order. A sense of something
ending. Pepper, The Piper, Hendrix and The Doors waiting in the darkened wings to
sweep all asunder. Revolver had shown the way, but there was one act still to play out
before the watershed of '67.
There will be, naturally, a look at a certain sporting event which held the nation
enthralled. All the nation, it should be said, save a young Detective Constable with the
Oxford City Police whose attention is engaged upon the strange and chilling mystery of
FILM 2: NOCTURNE.
1966 was also the year of Dr.Jonathan Miller's masterly interpretation of 'Alice in
Wonderland.' A favourite. Eerie. Unsettling. Haunting.
FILM 3: 'SWAY'… Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, our Oxford autumn brings
an English particular, fireworks – literal and figurative -­‐ and a strangler on the prowl.
The story was born of a bit of digging into Oxford City Police history. November the
Fifth was a perennial problem for the force. Leave for all ranks was invariably
cancelled, and squads of cops in mufti (wait till you see Jim Strange!) were sent into
the night to do what they might to keep the peace. For as darkness fell, so
lawlessness, violence and riotous disorder gripped the streets. And yet it's another
instruction from the Firework Code which looms large… Albeit in a different context
altogether.
On some notional level at least, 'SWAY' invokes the mood of a certain INSPECTOR
MORSE film generally held to be amongst the finest in the canon. I think afficionados
will recognise a pleasing foreshadowing… The old adage has it that those who do not
learn from history are doomed to repeat it. A lesson Endeavour Morse appears to
have missed.
ENDEAVOUR II
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