Endeavour Season 2 - Sway - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Nocturne

Endeavour is certainly hitting all the common detective series Trope episodes early on. Usually, it takes a few seasons before we have the Serial-Killer-With-A-Vendetta-For-Our-Hero episode, or the Meet-The-Family episode, or the Old Flame episode. Endeavour used all three in the first season. I initially thought this week's installment was a repeat of Fugue - a Serial Killer thriller, but it turns out the mystery itself is secondary to the emotional drama of an Old Flame.

Here's the thing though: for once, it's not Morse's old flame, it's Thursday's. This gives quite an unusual texture to the story, and once again focuses more on Morse's boss than the protagonist himself (I'm not complaining). Like Home, another Thursday-central episode, a pivotal theme is family. Sway focuses on marriage, love, and fidelity. (Spoilers ahead.)

The story itself comes second to the character drama. A serial killer is on the loose in Oxford (once again), strangling married women with a pair of fancy silk stockings. Morse tracks the stockings to a department store called Burridge’s, where a number of highly suspicious men stalk the stocking aisles. In the course of these investigations Morse meets an Italian woman named Luisa, who, the instant Thursday enters the room, collapses in a dead faint. This scene was probably a lot funnier than it should have been.

Endeavour Season 2 - Nocturne - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Trove

This week’s episode of Endeavour takes a Scooby-Doo twist, complete with a haunted mansion, creepy little girls, and a historical mystery. Most series have one or two murder-in-the-past episodes, practically all the Sherlock Holmes short stories have some link to history, with Poirot it’s Five Little Pigs and Elephants Can Remember, with Father Brown The Sign of the Broken Sword, with Morse The Wench is Dead.

Endeavour goes back to a massacre in the 1800s. Morse becomes involved while investigating a murder in a museum. Questioning witnesses leads him to a girls’ school, where a small band of students are staying for the summer holidays. Soon enough he sense foul play and delves into the place’s history, discovering the legend of Bloody Charlotte, the only survivor of the Victorian massacre, and possibly the culprit.

Needless to say, this means the house is haunted, and quite a few heart-thumping sequences ensue. Honestly, Morse and Thursday (while showing their usually quality) take backseat to the small, earnest drama in the school, and the excellent performances from the young actresses. 

Endeavour Season 2 - Trove - Episode Review

My review of last season's finale: Home

Endeavour Morse has always been the Doctor Who of detectives—a dynamic main character who draws us through plots of varying degrees of ridiculousness. If you can’t laugh at the inherent absurdity, it simply will not work. This episode is particularly tangled, with three wildly different threads turning out to be connected. I think.

Shaun Evans and Roger Allam return for a second series of this popular (and excellent) prequel to Inspector Morse, starring respectively as D.C. Endeavour Morse and his mentor-cum-sidekick, the lovingly decent Inspector Thursday. Overall, the episode is a welcome return to the homicidal society of Oxford (I immediately smiled to hear the closing theme song), though, as I said, weak in plotting.

The ritual montage of suspects and clues punctuate the opening credits, intercut with scenes of Morse taking a medical exam. He’s back on the job after a four-month hiatus due to the injury he sustained during last year’s season finale (which, incidentally, explains John Thaw’s slight limp.) The transition is somewhat rocky, as Thursday and Morse find it difficult to slip back into the easy banter of earlier days (though they still have the same incipient chemistry). Thursday is worried by Morse’s increased reliance on drink and is trying his best to curb the young man’s habit.