Thank you wonder2wonder! I hope the new episodes can surpass the ones from last season. Dugeulla, the season 6 "ender" was superb, still I think the best of the entire series.

lima, do I recall correctly that S6's finale episode was the one in which the high-rise apartment building collapsed, and that ultimately the end of the episode involved a shoot-out in a sand yard? And I believe that's the episode in which Endeavour moved into the former drug house - that we all know is the same house he still lived in throughout the Inspector Morse series.

Last year's season - which, as I recall, was excellent - now seems like it was eons ago. I see S7 has only three episodes, which I hope doesn't imply ITV is losing enthusiasm for the series.

Later PS: I've just remembered that there's this thread, that answers the questions I've asked above.

@genplant29 said:

Last year's season - which, as I recall, was excellent - now seems like it was eons ago. I see S7 has only three episodes, which I hope doesn't imply ITV is losing enthusiasm for the series.

The original "Inspector Morse (1987-2000)" series ended at 33 episodes. As kind of a tribute, "Lewis (2006-2015)" ended at that number too. It was assumed that this would also be so with "Endeavour (2013-)" and series 8 would be its last with three episodes. However, as it's still quite popular, the latter series might surpass the magic number of 33.

I sure hope the series keeps going - particularly considering I only started watching seems like probably two seasons ago.

I remember that the first episode I watched all the way through was something about a young dead woman whose body was found at an abandoned train station. If I'm not mistaken, she had an identical-twin sister - who was pretending to be her, and who had murdered her.

@genplant29 said:

I remember that the first episode I watched all the way through was something about a young dead woman whose body was found at an abandoned train station. If I'm not mistaken, she had an identical-twin sister - who was pretending to be her, and who had murdered her.

I saw the actress Rosalie Craig - the real Frances Porter, not the dead one - in three other murder mysteries. She was a suspect in those episodes too.

I see, from that credit link, that was S5, Episode 3. Now glancing also at the descriptions of that season's eps. 1 and 2, I realize I, back the other year, watched those, too. Apparently E3 was when things clicked for me and I finally decided, "Okay, I'm onboard."

In the prior seasons, I had watched the first parts (10-15 mins. or so) of 3 or so different episodes, but back then the series just didn't yet in any type way register with me. Why I wasn't "feeling it" prior to S5 was mainly that I was completely unable (back then) to accept Shaun Evans in no way, shape, or form reminding me anything of the John Thaw Endeavour Morse of the classic Inspector Morse series.

Actually, I still don't consider him the "real" Morse - however ultimately decided to enjoy Shaun Evans' depiction solely on its own merits, and to stop being hung up about considering him unrecognizable as the person and the character "Morse" of the Thaw series.

Btw, @wonder, speaking of that, I've just located the comments you posted about Shaun Evans' version on the Inspector Morse TMDb board back on 12 Aug. 2018. The italicized passage is from an Evans interview you quoted:

Shaun Evans, who plays the younger Morse in "Endeavour (2012-)", has said that he's never seen the original series and that he's interpreting the role in his own way, so that might explain some of the differences between the younger and older character.

◾ Endeavour star Shaun Evans admits he’s ‘never seen’ John Thaw's original Inspector Morse

◾ Please, let's lay Morse to rest: John Thaw fans look away – as Endeavour's Shaun Evans reveals his disapproval of plans to mark Morse's 30th anniversary in his own series

'With all due respect, I have a job to do and that is to try and make Endeavour the best it can be. I don’t think there’s any benefit in paying homage to what went before.’

‘I think you’d have to look very closely to find references in the script to them, they’re very well embedded,’ he says. ‘If I can be dead honest with you, when I first see the script for a new episode of Endeavour, if anything jars I say, “What’s this, has it got a place in our story?”, and if it hasn’t, it has to go.

‘I want the drama to be tight and entertaining. I don’t want it to be flabby, paying homage to something I’ve never seen. I want people of my generation who’ve never seen Endeavour before to enjoy this series.

'I don’t see the point in being reverential to what has gone before. If I put a question mark against something, the writer Russell Lewis will come back and say it’s a reference to Inspector Morse. For me, sometimes that doesn’t really have a place in our show. I know I may sound like a spoilsport saying that.’

I don't at all agree with his opinion - though I'm fine with it now.

@genplant29 said:

I don't at all agree with his opinion - though I'm fine with it now.

That's why actors, when they can't 'praise', they should only give non-committal answers to controversial questions.

I consider Endeavour as an alternate version of Morse. If it was not set in the 1960s, I could even imagine him as being the (illegitimate) son of Morse with a grudge against his father for not being there for him.

@genplant29 said:

I remember that the first episode I watched all the way through was something about a young dead woman whose body was found at an abandoned train station. If I'm not mistaken, she had an identical-twin sister - who was pretending to be her, and who had murdered her.

By the way, they were not twins. Frances was the older sister who resented Jilly for being her mom's favourite and having been put in charge of the inheritance. While Frances and her husband lived in debt, Jilly was freely spending it and carrying on with her lover Don.

Endeavour made the mistake of showing the photograph he got from Frances (pretending to be Jilly) only to Don, who did correctly identify her as Jilly. The mother also only had pictures of the real Jilly in her room, which was the same person as on the photograph.

Endeavour told them both that they were wrong and it was 'Frances'.

If he had shown the photo in the boutique in the first place - when he went there - to her co-worker Anoushka or the manager Marty, they would 've told him that it was not Frances.

But then, the case would've been solved in the first 15 minutes.

Thanks for the info! The two sisters managed, since the other year, to morph into one another's identical twin in my mind.

Following are excerpts from an article (authored by Diane Snyder), in the new double issue (Aug. 3-16) of TV Guide magazine, about the new season of Endeavour:

It's the end of 1970, and the investigators of Endeavour are trying to solve multiple murders in Oxford, England....(T)his is serious business for Det. Sgt. Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans) and his partner, Det. Chief Insp. Fred Thursday (Roger Allam)....//....When TV Guide Magazine visited the set last November, cast and crew were days away from wrapping Season 7 of the British mystery series, and it had already been renewed....(T)he reunited leads share more screen time [in Season 7] after their characters were sent to different divisions last year....// The three new 90-minute installments show that the prequel's Oxford-educated, opera- and crossword-puzzle-loving loner Morse has grown. No longer a novice detective, he's more akin to the cantankerous white-haired character played by the late John Thaw in the PBS Mystery! staple Inspector Morse (1987-2000). "We're getting closer now to the Morse everyone knows," says producer James Levison. // One visual similarity: Evans is clean-shaven after sporting a rather unpopular moustache in Season 6. "The amount of people who said to me, 'I didn't like that 'tache!'" he remarks, sighing. The actor directs tonight's [Aug. 9th's] opener, in which a young woman's body is found on New Year's Day. Morse eventually gets involved, but at the time the perpetually unlucky-in-love bachelor was waking up in Italy with an alluring woman he met at the opera (Stephanie Leonidas) - someone he hasn't seen the last of. (Sara Vickers does not appear as Morse's great love, Thursday's daughter Joan. Instead, the actress had a baby!) Filming took Evans to Venice for a few days....// Back in England, the cases reflect a changing society: A promising female scientist fights for her due, racist rhetoric escalates before an election, and students at an all-female college oppose its going coed. For the increasingly dour Thursday, the job is taking its toll; he and his protege have some brutal clashes. "There's disagreement over a case, and Endeavour is kind of critical of Fred - the word used is pedestrian," Allam says. And Morse is anything but pedestrian.

Incidentally, TV Guide magazine gives the season premiere episode "PICK OF THE WEEK!" status, out of everything coming on American t.v. during the week of Aug. 3rd!

Interesting article. Thanks genplant for going to the trouble to transcribe it!

The moustache didn't bother me, although I had to laugh when on another thread, bratface said it looked like a "porn stache".

SO, it's approximately 16 years until the Inspector Morse series takes place, presuming it was set contemporaneously. I'm going to put the 33-episode limit out of my mind and hope for the best, especially since Morse is the kind of character that can immortalize an actor. It's probably good that Shaun Evans is still relatively boyish looking because he's only 5 years younger than John Thaw (who looked much older than his years) was when he began the show. Having said that, I'm way beyond the point of referencing the earlier series when it comes to my regard for Endeavour, as it stands on its own. No doubt it was a challenge to appeal to the built-in fan base of Morse mavens, but I for one think it's exceeded expectation.

Hopefully the series will keep going for some time more, since there's still a lot of years with potential between 1970 and 1987 (though probably to no later than around 1976-ish is the farthest the Endeavour series should go, in order to maintain substantial "distance" spacing between the Shaun Evans and John Thaw versions of the character).

I totally agree with what you expressed about this series, merry. I had insurmountable difficulty (make that inability) accepting it earlier on, as I wanted (and fully expected) the Endeavour character to be John Thaw-like - which of course Shaun Evans' Endeavour is not. Now that a lot of years have passed though, I don't have any problem with the differences as, like you, I've come to accept, appreciate, and enjoy each series as its own separate and unique entity. (Ditto goes for the wonderful Lewis series - that I remain crazy about - of the same pedigree. [I have the DVDs set of the entire original run of that series and throughout recent weeks - to present - keep finding myself eager to re-watch it all yet again.])

Uh oh, it occurs to me that the controversial moustache could reappear as time advances through the 1970s (I don't know if I agree with your rationale genplant about wrapping it up by 1976). After thinking about it, it seems like that period was when so many men sported them, perhaps made popular by Burt Reynolds in his heyday??? Could it be why bratface associates it with porn, since Burt had a late-career role (and turned in a great performance) as a pornographer in the film Boogie Nights? But Shaun Evans may want to avoid any more silly controversy about facial hair...

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of the "police procedural" genre. Once in a while though, some have captured my attention, foremost among the few have been Morse-related! I'm psyched about the new season!

Since we cannot travel anywhere safely at the moment here is a website some of you might find interesting? It's a window on the world around us. I found it a couple of weeks ago & I try to visit it at least once a day. Some repeat quite often but there have been a lot added in the last couple of days.

https://window-swap.com/

That's neat, brat. And the views certainly beat my current available outdoors view (besides the fact that the present time is 10:30p.m., there's a big electrical storm - that includes pelting rain - in progress!).