Endeavour

It wasn't disappointing at all lemongrove. ?

I think it is important to contextualize the era with reference to social attitudes/fashion etc. But I also agree that can be done without it feeling an add on! Maybe we notice it as clunky only because we now realise how awful it was ..for a senior police officer to make sexual and sexist remarks to a young social worker!

I just couldn't see Morse ( John Thaw ) with that moustache PECS it looked like he had a bad smell under his nose.

One slight puzzle! This series is supposed to be in the early summer of 1968 just at the time when Oxford City Police became Thames Valley Constabulary, later becoming Thames Valley Police. Only thing is that during the programme reference was made to watching on TV the investiture of P.C as Prince of Wales. That event was 1st July 1969!!!!
I love it, but mainly because its about Oxford where I was born and spent my childhood.

On the stuff I have see it says
"Filmed in and around Oxford, the new set of films will be set in 1969."

Perhaps PECS. I worked in banking in the 1970s which was pretty much all about the men but my memories of it were more balanced because we half expected their attitudes and were primed to cope on them on whole. Also to sort of offset the nastiness there was still a lot of formalised politeness that does not seem to be reflected. In last week's episode Morse met a female character in a pub and he was shown remaining seated as she came into the room. My OH commented that back then he would have stood at that point. Yes there were some unpleasant events 'behind the filing cabinets' at work but my boss was a gentlemanly father figure and most of my male colleagues were polite and opened doors etc. Funnily enough my strongest memory of institutionalised sexism came when a female Bank union rep interviewed us all separately about welfare matters. She kept banging on about how much longer I was intending to remain in the job and was I expecting to get married/engaged soon. It was the general assumption that I was just doing a 'job' rather than starting a career that I found most frustrating and problematic.

I agree about the horse! The fact of how he intended to move it in a police car?!! Also that it conveniently stopped right next to that child's body in what was clearly a several acre field!!!! The tash is awful! done to make him look older I guess, poor Win is clearly on the edge of a nervous breakdown ( hardly surprising!!) The new policemen are quite horrible, am confused about the suitcase, and thought the clergyman was shifty!!! But I still enjoyed it!!!!

Women are not always 'sisterly' & supportive Hilda Look at posts on GN!
Not many of the lads I know/knew in the late 60s would have stood up for us girls especially in the pub but maybe in an office or more formal situation they would have.

According to Wikipedia the new series is set in early summer of 1968, which was in reality when the change over from City Police to Thames Valley took place. The programme seemed to indicate that the change over had only just happened hence all the teething problems that were clearly indicated!

I loved seeing the poster with Colin Dexter's name on too. Keeping the tradition of him appearing in Morse episodes going.?

I absolutely loved the escaped tiger episode!

The horse was an enjoyable red herring for us. I thought it was the farmer wot dunnit because the girl would often get off the bus at an earlier stop to visit the horse in its field, give it sugar lumps etc., so it got to know her. Her books told us she was pony mad so when the horse got loose and wandered across her lying in the field it led Morse to her body.

As you can tell I watched far too many episodes of Champion the Wonder Horse when I was ten!!

I thought it was just to show us what would have happened to Lewis Carroll if he had been taking his pictures today. I am afraid one's father was rarely around when sexist remarks were made.

I liked it but didn't like the detective who felt he could manufacture evidence and was sadly disappointed to see how hangdog Thursday was. I liked him far better in the previous series.
One thing I couldn't work out is they planted the hammer, then found the suitcase with the real hammer and blood stained clothing. Wouldn't it have vindicated Thursday to hand in the case minus the hammer?

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to the next one. I do like to see the whole story in one episode so I don't forget what's gone on :-)

Me too Nanaandgrampy. I'm going to record the new series of Shetland and watch it in long sessions rather than wait a week between episodes.

Watched it yesterday and will certainly watch again. I felt this episode was very much a transition from the last series.
Reminders, catchup and setting the scene for Morse's return to his real calling as a detective.
Were the unpleasant detectives there to flag up the differences in approach between the merged forces?
Or perhaps just to bring in the fairly widespread sexist attitudes prevalent at the time. Morse was not guilty of this but I seem to remember that when older, he could be quite intolerant of women!

Thursday WAS coughing up blood in the last series.... then he coughed up the actual bullet, and all was well again!

Well, I loved it. Always record anything on a station with adverts, then can watch the drama and not the adverts. I did not think I would like the tache, but actually did - thought it suited him very well. This was obviously an introductory episode as he will be back in CID next week. Thursday had already said that if the brush case was handed in, then it would mean that it would cause every case he and his team had been involved in would be up for investigation. Although the owner of that brush case had been found guilty on planted evidence (which Thursday knew and concerned him), Morse finding the actual murder weapon vindicated the outcome of that trial - and rather than handing that in and starting all sort of problems for no good outcome, Morse put it back where he had found it. Prior to that, Thursday still thought that he had helped send an innocent man to the gallows.
In order for Morse to be transferred back to CID, it was implied to the Senior Officer that he was a member of a 'Lodge'. Such was the power of those secret societies back then. Morse life-long, hated and opposed such societies, and this probably had a result on his status in the police back then.
So no actual murder in this episode (except the one prior to the start for which the husband hand been hanged), Hit and Run.
Looking forward to rest of this series very much

I agree Fran. Just watched it and thought it was excellent. Looking forward to the next episode.

We enjoyed it. Also recorded and skipped the adverts. I could live with the moustache, reminded me very much of the way a friend looked in 1969.

We enjoyed it. Yes, the moustache was very much of the time. We were married then and DH sported a similar one. I think I encouraged him to gro one after seeing Terence Stamp in’ Far from the Madding Crowd’.

Ah but it suited Terrance Stamp with th owe beautiful eyes.

Oh dear! Endeavour has turned into Midsomer Murders ... and not only that, but the scriptwriters have made the characters explain the plot ... such a lazy way of telling the story. This series is a bit rubbish (but "Thunderbirds" was exactly how it used to be!)

I though " midsomer" when he went into thar crazy therapy session!

I usually love Endeavour, but the moustache is awful.
And the nasty-boss policeman is such an overdone cliche.
Might add that I wish Endeavour would take his hands out of his pockets!! It just doesn't seem to go with his character.

Somewhat lazy writing, IMO.