Interview and introduction (‘Drinks at the Randolph’) copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2023

Drinks at the Randolph

THE MORSE BAR at the Randolph Hotel is quite small but comfortably intimate. This is particularly the case if you are fortunate enough to find an unoccupied table by the glorious, open stone fireplace which dominates the room. Although it may be tempting to simply glance across from your drink and bask in the warmly lit interior, admiring the classic elegance of the decor with its wood-panelled walls and some of the pleasingly familiar and really rather appropriate burgundy furnishings, it would be a crime not to look up occasionally to appreciate the arched ceiling with its ornate cornices and splendid chandeliers.

However, Colin Dexter could be forgiven for taking the Neo-Gothic grandeur of the hotel in his stride since the place must surely have felt like something of a second home to him, although, it is almost impossible to imagine that the author could resist becoming somewhat reflective during visits such as these given that so many of his books and their television adaptations include scenes which are set within those majestic walls. Of course, it would be pure speculation to suppose that Colin recalled that fanciful wet Saturday afternoon in 1972 while on holiday in a little guest house located somewhere between Caernarfon and Pwllheli, when he began writing the first of his thirteen novels and various short stories which introduced a certain ill-tempered detective with a fondness for real ale, opera and crosswords.

And, if Colin had in fact indulged in a little nostalgia regarding his life and achievements as an author, who could blame him? In addition to the aforementioned best-selling books, the many reprints and omnibus editions, there was, of course, also the phenomenal success of the television series, Inspector Morse, which ran for thirty-three episodes between 1987 and 2000. Indeed, even after all these years, the much-loved and admired show remains so potent in the minds of its millions of worldwide fans that guests may well find themselves overwhelmed by a great sense of melancholy as they look out of the window of the Morse Bar on to Beaumont Street and the Ashmolean Museum opposite, not to be able to see the great John Thaw drive past in that famous Mark 2 Jaguar.

Additionally, Lewis began in 2006, in which Morse’s faithful sergeant and loyal friend finally got both a promotion and his own TV show which was another huge hit with audiences and would run for the same amount of episodes as its predecessor until it ended in 2015. Furthermore, waiting patiently in the right-hand corner of the bar on a busy evening in September of 2010, Colin was about to witness yet another spin-off of sorts although it’s probably not the one you’re thinking of. At least not quite yet.

Alma Cullen had already written four episodes of the original Inspector Morse series when she received permission from Colin to write the first stage play based on his characters. House of Ghosts, a play-within-a-play, opens with a performance of Hamlet, in which the actress playing Ophelia suddenly dies mid-performance. Morse, played by Colin Baker – most famous as the sixth Doctor Who – is immediately at the scene of the crime having been in the audience and so begins the whodunnit. Colin Dexter was in town that evening to see the play at the New Theatre although there was also some other quite important business for him to attend to first.

Writer Russell Lewis – who protests that he never set out to major in crime despite the overwhelming evidence in his CV to the contrary – and Damien Timmer, joint managing director of the Mammoth Screen production company, had first worked together on one of the later Inspector Morse episodes, The Way Through the Woods, in 1995 with Russell adapting Colin’s novel of the same name and Damien acting as script editor. Damien also performed the same duties a couple of years later on the crime series, Heat of the Sun, which was written and co-created by Russell. Due to the difference in time zones as the production was shot in Zimbabwe, the two often found themselves – first at the Runnymede Hotel, on the banks of the River Thames, and later at Bray Studios, Windsor – working through or at least deep into the night. It was a fairly challenging and chaotic production and as close as one ever might wish to get to the “Heart of Darkness”. Despite “the horror”, Russell and Damien spent most of their time laughing like drains – or the madmen they had become.

Meanwhile, Michele Buck, who would later become the other co-founder of Mammoth Screen, was also working out of Bray and one day, in a little portakabin on the studio lot at about wine o’clock on a Friday afternoon, Damien introduced her to Russell and the three seem to have got on famously. While Damien and Michele would become a formidable duo in ITV, sweeping all before them – at Central, then United, and finally at ITV Studios, with a veritable litany of hit shows between them before launching the independent Mammoth Screen together, Russell became involved with the two once again on Lewis – writing the story for the first episode and returning to script later episodes – and that’s what led them to ask if he would be interested in writing this new project that Colin Dexter had been waiting ever so patiently to talk about at the Morse Bar.

Having travelled up by train from London Paddington, Michele and Russell, along with his development script editor, Tom Winchester who had also worked on Lewis, arrived at the Randolph Hotel around either five or six but certainly early evening. After shortly stopping to admire Colin’s Cracking Cryptic Crosswords guidebook which was proudly displayed in one of the glass cabinets by the reception desk, the four of them sat down and ordered champagne. Indeed, there was much to celebrate; Colin had read Russell’s script for what was originally referred to as Young Morse – a prequel to Inspector Morse that would celebrate twenty-five years since the broadcast of the first Morse episode, The Dead of Jericho – and Colin gave his blessing there and then.

Shortly afterwards, walking only a few minutes away from the hotel to the New Theatre, Colin, Michele, Tom and Russell, met with Christopher Burt (producer of Inspector Morse, Lewis and so many other iconic British television shows) and that other Lewis, Kevin Whatley. Finding their seats and waiting for the performance of House of Ghosts to begin, as the lights went down, this was perhaps the first opportunity for Russell to take a moment and reflect that Endeavour was actually going to happen; Inspector Morse would be properly celebrated for its Silver Anniversary in 2012. A few years later in my first interview with him, Russell recalled the events of that evening with great deference:

‘Funny – I haven’t thought about that day a great deal since, but it was life-changing in its way. When you’re at the coalface every thought is about the production, and you have some pretty torrid times one way and another. It’s ridiculously easy under Wartime Conditions to forget how fortunate one is. Not to take it for granted, but sometimes only to see the problems you’ve got to solve. And then you go – wait a minute, this really is as good as it gets. We’ve got this amazing sandbox, brilliant collaborators, and you get to spend the best part of each year actually telling new stories about Colin’s beloved character.

Endeavour, Fred Thursday and the rest of Oxford’s Finest really seem to have connected with the audience – which is lovely. They invite us into their homes, both here and around the world. From the City of Dreaming Spires to the world – the reach of thing is staggering. And all of this is happening because of that evening at the Randolph Hotel when Colin gave us his blessing and entrusted us with his creation.’

And so, that is how it all began. Sadly, however, after 10 years of conducting well over 60 interviews with the cast and crew of Endeavour, I must now address how it will end and so I somewhat solemnly present my final online exclusive Q&A with Russell Lewis; bespoke writer, purveyor of fine manuscripts, and, truly, the best and wisest of men.

~

‘Beethoven had his Schindler. Haydn his Griesinger. Every artist needs his biographer. Someone to bear witness to his greatness and set it down for posterity…’

– Dr. Daniel Cronyn, FUGUE (S1:E2)

‘Hold on tightly, let go lightly.’

~ The final exclusive Endeavour interview with Russell Lewis ~

‘All right, yes, please, and thank you. All aboard for the last bus.’

-TERMINUS (S8:E3)

DAMIAN: Considering the title of the last film of the previous series, TERMINUS, as in the end of a journey, the fact that the featured bus route was number 33 which referenced not only that this was the thirty-third Endeavour film but also both Inspector Morse and Lewis ended with the same amount of episodes, plus, Sam Thursday’s senior officer, Stanhope, shared the same name with the character in the war play, Journey’s End, wasn’t it all a little mischievous and misleading?

RUSS: Perish the thought. I mean – we try desperately hard to keep our cards close to our chest in order not to spoil things for the audience. The expectation was that we would follow the lead of Inspector Morse and Lewis and call time at 33 films. But none of us on Endeavour have ever mentioned how many we might make. For years, as you know, we lived – like most shows – from commission to commission, never knowing if we would be renewed. So – there was often a kind of a ‘could end there’ note to the final film of every series. But, as I’ve said elsewhere, if we’d ended things at 33 films –then,  taken together with the previous series – it would have meant Colin Dexter losing his wicket on 99 runs. I sort of felt honour bound to see the great man back to the pavilion a centurion before bad light stopped play. And, perhaps, given the interconnectedness of the overarching story behind these last three cases, folk might view them as one thing. So.

But we couldn’t ignore people’s expectations – that this could very well be the end – hence the nods to the magic number.

DAMIAN: We mentioned Agatha Christie recently and you said that Shaun and Roger weren’t too keen on some of the tropes associated with the genre but wasn’t TERMINUS overtly Christie-esque?

RUSS: Not originally. In its first iteration, it was a straightforward slasher. The request to make it a more traditional whodunit arose from the reaction to the first draft. Sort of, ‘Nobody goes full Carpenter.’ I’ve always been taken by the device of the ‘final girl’ – and I was looking to invert that. So that was the initial jumping off point. And it sort of follows on from your previous question. I wanted to mark that 33 in some way – and as soon as I struck on it being the number of a bus, the question then becomes how do I get from that to that impossible conceit ‘the isolated community’ – whether that’s Soldier Island or Camp Crystal – how do you go about creating an isolated community in 1971 in Oxfordshire – and that leads to you to snow, and the ‘country house murder mystery’ is never far away – but of course whenever you think of snow – you inevitably think of a particularly romantic and glamorous train stuck in a snowdrift – and so it became Murder on the Luxton & District Express.

DAMIAN: To what extent did the Fontana editions of the Christie books with Tom Adams’ covers inspire the imagery for TERMINUS and last week’s film, UNIFORM?

RUSS: I don’t know about TERMINUS so much, but certainly UNIFORM. My opportunities to do such things were growing increasingly few. So… But he’s always been there. Those images. They’re sort of fetish status for me and Damien Timmer. We both adore them. Incredible things.

DAMIAN: The reveal that Endeavour was the drunk on the bus and the witness they’d been looking for all along was absolute genius. I don’t know if there’s a name for this kind of device where a mysterious character is hidden in plain sight, but it reminded me slightly of the identity twists of Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho, Kevin Spacey’s characters in both The Usual Suspects and Seven, and the reveal that it was young Michael Myers we see in the POV shots at the beginning of Halloween that murdered his sister.

RUSS: Well – that’s lovely to hear that it worked for you. I was worried that it might be glaringly obvious. But there we are. Phew! It would have been a problem if people had tumbled to it.

DAMIAN: And speaking of Halloween and the ‘final girl’, I know Strange and Joan won tickets to see The Carpenters in concert (STRIKER, S8:E1) but I’m wondering if it might have been more appropriate for them to see John Carpenter! Not only do we have a masked killer on the loose in this film (one of them also had the surname of Loomis), there’s also the reference to Haddonfield and am I right in thinking that Matt’s score – particularly during the snow scenes – had echoes of Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to The Thing?

RUSS: Well, one might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Oh – I wouldn’t put anything past Matt Slater. But yes, you’re right, of course. As soon as you get to the hotel, things go full Cat & Canary/And Then There Were None – Harry Alan Towers second stab at And Then There Were None is set in a ski lodge, so there are nods to that, and, of course – as you rightly identified – man being the warmest place to hide. I could have happily made it a two-part story with fully one half set at the hotel. But sometimes less is more. There’s also a touch of The Cask of Amontillado going on – returning to the Rackham [Edgar Allan Poe] illustration we talked about previously.

DAMIAN: Let’s take a look at the following scene which I very much liked:

INT. THURSDAY’S HOUSE. HALL – NIGHT 3 – 0029

THURSDAY seeing DOROTHEA out… 

THURSDAY: Thanks for coming.

DOROTHEA: I’m not sure I’ve been any help at all. You want to get to the bottom of this – there’s only one person left alive knows what truly happened at Tafferton Park. And that’s Flavian Creech. Goodnight.

DOROTHEA exits.  A moment on THURSDAY — he reaches for his HAT and COAT. WIN comes into the HALL. 

THURSDAY: There’s a patient I’ve got to see at Strangmoor Hospital. It’s urgent.

WIN: Who’s this for? Morse?

(off THURSDAY)

It’s Sam you should be out there looking for. That’s who you should ‘have to’. Your own. Our son. My son. Not somebody else’s. Why aren’t you over there? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re a coward. If anything’s happened to him…  

JOAN: Mum, don’t say that.

WIN: You keep out of it! I’ll say what I please in my own house and I’ll thank you to not take sides! I’m not one of your women at your place you can talk down to. You think you know it all with your books and your courses and your ideas. And where did that get you? Leamington!

JOAN – stabbed to the heart.

JOAN: Don’t. Please…

THURSDAY: What does that mean?

WIN: Never you mind what it means.  You think cause I keep my mouth shut I walk around with my eyes closed?  Well, I don’t.  You weren’t so bloody clever there, were you? 

JOAN: No.

WIN: No! I know more about life than you ever will and don’t you forget it.  I’m your mother, and you’ll give me the respect I’m due.

(to THURSDAY)

Well, go if you’re going, then. And if you are going don’t come back. I’m sick of the sight of you.

And with that WIN heads off.

JOAN: Dad. She doesn’t mean it. It’s just…

THURSDAY: No. She does. And she’s right. Doing nothing. Bearing it. That takes a different kind of guts. I’m no good at sitting waiting. Never have been. If I could do something to help find Sam…  

JOAN: Of course, you would. She knows that. We all know that. She’s… 

THURSDAY: I’d tear the world down to see him home safe. Give my last breath. But I can’t. There’s nothing I can do. Nothing. And that’s… 

THURSDAY can’t find the words to express the existential horror contained in his powerlessness.

THURSDAY: If I can’t fix the one thing – then I’ve got to fix the other. You know how I am. Sam’s always taken after your Mum. Slow to anger and quick to forgive. But you and me? We’re… 

JOAN: I know.

THURSDAY nods. Something understood. Unspoken between father and daughter. Mutual absolution. THURSDAY dons his HAT and COAT, exits into night and snowfall. JOAN stares at the shut door – heart breaking.

CUT TO:

DAMIAN: Electrifying scene. Now, although I completely understand that Win is absolutely desperate and distraught about her son going missing, like previous misfortunes such as Thursday losing all the money he lent to his brother, isn’t she still rather cruel to both her husband and her daughter – perhaps particularly the latter?

RUSS: I think everyone’s got a breaking point.

DAMIAN: Was Win’s unkind reference to Joan’s ‘books’, ‘courses’, her ‘clever ideas’ and asking where they got her, supposed to echo the comments made by Endeavour’s mother-in-law and her sarcastic denunciation of his failure despite his ‘books and poetry’ and his ‘snooty music’ in the previous film?

RUSS: From the other end of the telescope. Any parent/child relationship – mother/daughter relationship can be… challenging. I think that’s been the thing about the Thursdays – under the magnolia painted wood-chip there have always been these massive emotional tectonic plates at work. Things not spoken about.

DAMIAN: And are the audience to assume that Thursday and Joan have never talked about the events in Leamington, including her miscarriage?

RUSS: I suspect that Thursday père had no idea that she’d even been in hospital. Win – if we imagine she knew, and I suppose we must from what she says – would have kept it from Fred. For a number of reasons. Primarily – and quite practically – so that he didn’t go around and break every bone in Joan’s fancy man’s body. Joan too – in her scene with Endeavour all those years ago, insisting her injuries were the result of ‘a fall’. In that wonderful episode title from the matchless Deadwood – A Lie Agreed Upon. That would have been her tack with Fred, had it been ever divulged. Whereas Endeavour could restrain his fury, there would have been no stopping Fred. The thing about it is – she’s selling this story about ‘a fall’ to coppers who probably weekly if not daily have in their line of work dealt with black-eyed wives and sweethearts with a propensity for walking into doors or falling down stairs.

I saw a bit of that as a boy. The aftermath at least. Not within the family – in this particular instance – but adjacent. I mean – there had been terrible and long sustained physical abuse visited on my grandmother during her first marriage in the 20s, but this was much later. The story – oddly enough – came to the fore in QUARTET. Domestic violence. We would go and visit the wife often during her regular stays in hospital. She’d have been possibly in her sixties. Given – perhaps understandably – to drink. ‘Nothing of her’ as the phrase has it. Maybe seven stone wringing wet.  I can see her now on her gurney – battered from head to foot. She looked as if she’d been in a serious car crash. Funnily enough, I’m probably more shocked looking back on it now, than I was as a boy. I can’t remember exactly how old I was – not small. Ten. Twelve. Something like that.

The husband had a prosthetic leg – I’m not sure if it was a war injury. To annoy him, or get back at him in some way – his wife would hide the prosthesis. When he found it, it would become the instrument of his violence, which is likely why his wife hid the damned thing in the first place. A quite truly awful cycle of violence. Both are long gone now, getting on for half a century. I think – probably unsurprisingly – she went first, then him some years later. The thing was everybody knew. Everybody knew. And nothing was done. Succour was lent and comfort where it was needed but there was no intervention. No police. People still patronised the business. And you’d stand on your side of the counter, and you knew – and he knew you knew – and you knew he knew you knew. And not a word was said beyond, ‘And a quarter of sherbert lemons, please.’

So – the notion that Joan might ‘have a fall’ – that was something familiar. That eyes would be averted, and if at all possible it wouldn’t be spoken of again – that too was something I knew a bit about. I think also as a mother – Win’s protecting her daughter. Protecting Joan in Fred’s eyes. Her ‘reputation’ – quote unquote. Allowing him to still think of her as she imagines he might think of her. Still ‘his little girl’ – again, quote unquote. The thought that he had somehow failed to protect her – as he would think of it – would have very likely broken him.  Win wants to somehow contain the hurt, and absorb as much of it as she can for both of them.  It tends to be what Win has always done.  She’s protecting them both.  But there’s only so much of other people’s pain one can deflect and take inside oneself before the mind and soul becomes overloaded – and Sam being missing…  She has to off-load some section of this psychic and emotional baggage she’s towing.

DAMIAN: As you wrote this scene, did you know that Jack Bannon would reprise his role as Sam Thursday and might his fate have been very different otherwise?

RUSS: We didn’t know if Jack would very graciously return. In early iterations, we assumed that he very likely wouldn’t, and the ending reflected that. Someone asked me the other day about the final film and multiple alternative endings designed to throw people off the scent. Well – there certainly were a couple of scripted endings for TERMINUS. But I think, in the end, we went with the one that you saw. But there was the potential for a much more cataclysmic ending – which we stepped back from quite late.

DAMIAN: We’ve frequently talked about art imitating life or coincidences as you call them. However, a little canary told me that Roger Allam had an Uncle Fred who fought in World War II and an Aunt Win! I like coincidence as much as the next man, but seriously?

RUSS: Yes – you couldn’t make it up, could you. I’d no idea when I named Win Win.  

DAMIAN: Hmmm. Anyway, let’s take a look at another great scene:

INT. THURSDAY’S HOUSE. HALL/LIVING ROOM – NIGHT 3 – 0403

JOAN: opens the door to STRANGE.

JOAN: Jim?

STRANGE: I did try to get you on the blower, but the lines must be down. I went by Morse’s but the place is in darkness and he’s not answering the door. So. But I wouldn’t fret. He usually lands butter side up. 

(he smiles)

So – how’s everyone? And more to the point – how are you?

That’s all it takes. One kind word. While breathes Jim Strange, the age of chivalry is not yet passed. But kindness is more than she can bear…

JOAN: I’m sorry, I just…

JOAN covers her face and breaks down. 

LIVING ROOM – WIN drawn by the sound of her daughter’s sobbing, comes to the door and looks along the HALL to see by the FRONT DOOR, JOAN buried in STRANGE’s comforting embrace as he rocks and shushes her. Both oblivious to WIN’s presence.

STRANGE: Hey! Hey, now. I got you. It’s alright. I got you. Don’t worry. There now. There, there. It’ll all be alright. I’ve got you.

And he has.

CUT TO:

DAMIAN: Strange has got her. What was Win thinking at that moment?

RUSS: I think there was little room in Win’s head for anything other than worrying about Sam. But maybe in some corner of her it registered as potentially something more than first appeared. There’s a line in John Whiting’s The Devils – the play based on Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, later made into a remarkable movie by Ken Russell – where Grandier is talking about how he and his mistress Ninon came to be lovers. He had first come to her house to offer comfort after the death of her husband – a rich wine merchant. And he says, ‘Tears must be wiped away. How is that to be done without a caress?’

So – I kind of had that in mind. Not that anyone in their right mind would compare Strange with Urbain Grandier – but the sentiment.

DAMIAN: Can you tell me about writing the scenes at Strangmoor Psychiatric Hospital and the kind of actor you envisioned in your mind as you wrote the character of Flavian Creech and why you referenced “The Beast of Belgravia” since it was the moniker of a real-life murderer?

RUSS: Flavian Creech was a late addition, if I remember. Such was his history that it felt like he warranted a notorious sobriquet – ‘Beast of’ felt the right kind of period hyperbole, and I just landed on Belgravia at random – having cat-sat there for some months many decades ago in a flat belonging to a 1940s Hollywood starlet. I’ve just remembered that she once appeared as a guest in Morse. How mad is that? Only connect.

So – it’s just happenstance, I’m afraid. Had a real Beast of Belgravia been in my databank or on my radar I would have avoided using it. There must be between five and six-hundred names one’s either made up or snatched from the ether across the last ten years. It would be nigh on miraculous if art didn’t entirely coincidentally imitate life at some point.

Usually, compliance and neg-checking would flag such an instance – but given the sheer volume of such checks it becomes almost impossible to identify or pick-up every connection. The only thing you can rely on is that if one were aware of it, then we’d have avoided it like the plague. The last thing one ever wants to do is discomfit anyone or cause them a moment’s pain – least of all anyone with a connection to a crime in real life. Relatives or loved ones or children of the deceased – God forbid – whomever it might be.

If what one had held to be invention caused anyone the slightest upset, then I apologise wholeheartedly and unreservedly. We might take the odd pot-shot at targets inspired by real life counterparts – for example, some of the less savoury political groups that have troubled public life in these islands – but none of us would ever knowingly take aim at people who might’ve suffered or been connected to some terrible real world event. That’s not what we’re about at all. It’s a whodunit. A bit of entertainment on the television.   

DAMIAN: Of course. Anyway, just out of curiosity, who was the 1940s Hollywood starlet?

RUSS: Her name was Mildred Shay, and I believe – due to her diminutive stature – she was known in her pomp as ‘The Pocket Venus.’ She appeared, if memory serves, as one of the American tourists in The Wolvercote Tongue.

DAMIAN: Well, fan my brow! Central to solving the case is the clue about the cufflinks which marked each man out as a member of the football Pools syndicate and predicting the results. While we were discussing STRIKER (S8:E1) and football recently, you made the mistake of mentioning to me that it was a Holy ritual in your household on Saturday evenings for your old man to mark off his Pools coupon so I’m likely to read too much into it… However, if this idea wasn’t inspired by your childhood, then it must have at least brought back some very vivid memories?

RUSS: At one point, a Pools win for the Thursdays crossed my mind – but it would have been too cute. So. In all honesty, those memories are never very far away. So long as there’s football, it’ll always bring to mind ‘The Results’ and the particular vocal cadence and inflection with which they were announced. It’ll be something lost to those who never knew it, but for about ten minutes every Saturday evening vast swathes of the country stopped what they were doing to mark off their Pools. The announcer would read through the entirety of the full time results from every match in the English and Scots football divisions. Heads would be bent over coupons, pens poised, and by the way the first result was intoned, you could take a pretty reliable stab at whether what followed would be revealed as a win, a draw, or a loss. There’d be an upward inflection on the name of the Away Team – a note of surprise – if it was going to be a win. For draws, both teams names would be delivered with the same cadence. I don’t know if you can find old examples of this on Youtube, but if they are there, then they’ll bear me out.

DAMIAN: Of all the people from your childhood, who do you think would be most proud of your remarkable accomplishments as a writer?

RUSS: Most proud? I genuinely couldn’t hazard a guess. Having written anything at all that might ever have been made would have seemed so unlikely to all the family. But I was a bookish boy who ruined his eyesight reading by torchlight under the bedclothes and, when I wasn’t up the local library, spent his summer holidays filling exercise books with ‘stories’. So. Perhaps it wasn’t wholly unexpected that ‘words’ would be involved somehow. They’d all be proud, I’m sure. Not that I was writing particularly – but that I was making a living. That’s what it was all about – that generation, that class. Dependable gainful employment. The means to keep a roof over one’s head and put food on the table. I suppose, like anyone, I can say that I wouldn’t be doing what I do now if the cards hadn’t fallen in the particular order that they did. And they were all a huge part of that. Each in their way. In the deathless phrase beloved of the Sunday papers Problem Page confessional – ‘one thing led to another.’ Fate. For want of a nail…

You don’t get it at the time. Not completely. But now – from the other end of the telescope… It would have been nice to have more time with them. To have known them better as an adult.

DAMIAN: When was the first time you heard someone say, ‘Mind how you go’?

RUSS: I honestly don’t recall. It’s just one of those phrases, isn’t it, that’s always been in my Jamboree Bag of British period idiom. I’m inordinately fond of those phrases.  Something comforting about them. I suppose it’s because they remind me of where I started. It’s about class and place. ‘How’s your Bert’s lumbago?’ Such things – “Mustn’t grumble!” – serve as a sort of verbal social lubricant. When it comes to emotion, we’re not known in these damp islands to be a madly demonstrative race, but I think those nuts and bolts, seemingly inane phrases can be freighted with so much. A man such as Fred Thursday would find it infinitely easier to say ‘Mind how you go’ than ‘I love you.’  I’m not sure he’d even think that his various friendships with his colleagues fall under that category. You love your wife. Your children. But men? So – sometimes ‘Mind how you go’ will mean exactly that. And sometimes it’s a way of saying, ‘You matter to me. I care deeply about you.’ He talked recently about his men – losing three of them quite close to the end of the war. I think the feeling there between people who have stood that close to death for a long time with others – that fellow feeling, that’s love, isn’t it?  Though it’s – then at least – only deemed safe to describe as such from the other side of the veil. ‘Greater love hath no man…’

DAMIAN: The official ITV press announcement stated that the production company, Mammoth Screen, together with Shaun, Roger and yourself, had all mutually agreed that this would be the last series. Was there any doubt in your mind as to whether this was the right decision for you, the cast and crew, and also a devoted and loyal audience?

RUSS: The writing had been on the wall for some time. Along with a substantial quantity of blood. And deBryn’s beloved brain-matter. So. I could have carried on writing it quite happily until I fell off the perch – but sometimes you have to look to Kenny Rogers for a lead. It was the right time to stop. The difficulty of making a thing increases in direct proportion to its longevity. And most important of all, we didn’t want to outwear our welcome.

DAMIAN: I think it was in our very first interview that you told me you knew exactly how Endeavour would end. Has your original vision finally made it to the screen intact?

RUSS: No plan survives first contact with the enemy. But certainly some part of it made it through – after a fashion. The part that mattered. If not always a love story, it was always a story about love. Of one kind or another. Which sort of touches on your earlier question about ‘Mind how you go.’

DAMIAN: Given your writing has gained both the love of the audience and the respect of your peers, to what extent did you feel any pressure to deliver one final script that wouldn’t disappoint?

RUSS: Well – both statements probably wouldn’t stand deep interrogation, but it’s very kind of you to say and think so. Er… the main body of your question. I don’t think any of us wanted to let down an audience that’s been with us for over ten years, and beyond that, none of us wanted to do any kind of damage to the affection in which Colin’s creation is rightly held. So. No pressure. 

In all honesty, writing the yearly series finale is typically done under pretty heavy manners. You’re up against it for time, for budget, for… a multiplicity of reasons. You simply don’t have the luxury of time to allow yourself to be caught like a rabbit in the headlights. If that makes sense. It’s got to get done – so, as often as not, whatever extraneous meaning might be imparted to the thing by dint of its being ‘the last’ whatever passes one by entirely. You’re just grateful to have survived with your skin and neck more or less intact. 

You just do your best and hope that’s enough.

Of course, the curse is that one’s fated only to be aware of the things one could have done better. Or the things that for one reason or another couldn’t be delivered or realised just so – despite everyone’s best efforts. And they can and do come prowling at three a.m. – that’s if you’ve managed to get to sleep at all. It’s all you can see. But that’s the price of entry. Living with one’s manifold shortcomings. Dwell on it, and it’s a one way ticket to the laughing house. 

DAMIAN: One actor I interviewed recently said that they not only loved the script for the final episode, but it also made them cry. Can you describe your emotions as you wrote the words, ‘Roll end credits’ for the very last time?

RUSS: It would have been against an unforgiving minute, so very likely the feeling would have been one of relief. But it’s really not like Paul Sheldon typing THE END, then having his one cigarette and a glass of champagne. More’s the pity. It may be like that in publishing, but in television it really is never over until it’s locked. And truly not even then. There will be pink pages, and blue pages, and green pages, and salmon pages and goldenrod pages, and ADR… So – it’s a staggered ending that sputters to a close. You never know the point where no more will be required, so it sort of ends without you knowing the exact moment that your input has become surplus to requirements. 

I’d love to say it was a wonderful moment of fulfilment, but it was probably a much more prosaic, ‘Can I sleep now?’

DAMIAN: I know you mentioned last time that you weren’t downhearted about Endeavour coming to an end but in years to come, should you hear the Morse theme playing on the wireless, or see a burgundy or black Jaguar driving past, will you not feel sentimental or nostalgic?

RUSS: The glass is always half-full for you, Barcroft. Like Rumpole, I’ve operated on a taxi rank principle for over thirty-odd years. A hansom for hire. Or hack – depending on your point of view. So, I expect it’ll be more a feeling of, ‘I had that Morse in the back of the cab once…’

As I said previously, I’ll very likely never have a sandbox like it again. So that I’ll miss.  Working with that fantastic team of creative people. That’s the most difficult aspect of it all.  

DAMIAN: Even though you will never commit them to paper again, do you still hear the voices of Endeavour and all the other regular characters and, if so, what do they say?

RUSS: “Well, Clarice? Have the lambs stopped screaming?”  

I think I mentioned elsewhere about Stan Laurel continuing to write Laurel and Hardy material after Babe died, and that the pages were found in his desk drawer after he died. Whether that’s apocryphal or not, I don’t honestly know, but the impulse will remain, I’m sure. That particular Endeavour muscle. You don’t spend time with those characters for more than a decade and then imagine they’ll fully vacate the premises at the end of it. So – I expect they’ll be unquiet spirits who’ll haunt my heart for some time to come yet. Benevolent ones, hopefully.  

At risk of going full Norma Desmond…  I’ll miss the real people involved more than I can say. For many years we held our read-throughs at 141 Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, an address that bears a blue plaque on the wall outside which commemorates another Morse – Samuel – the painter and inventor of the Code. Another one of those mad coincidences, but that’s by the by. Some writers may like read-throughs. I’ve always found them agony. Your heart sings a bit if a gag goes over well in the room, but mostly you’re just standing on a tightrope of insecurity over a vat of hungry crocodiles. And after the read, come the notes, and the tender evisceration and dismemberment of the draft. But…  and it’s a fairly colossal but – the atmosphere on those bright blue mornings…  The deep breath before the plunge. Team Endeavour Assemble! The joy and disbelief that comes with the recurrent realisation that one gets to do this for a job.

Those mornings, you hear it before you see it. Andy Foster – our Second AD for many years – was typically on the street, clocking and logging the arrivals. Then, as you climb the stairs, you just hear this murmuration. Seventy, eighty-odd people having conversations. And Wardrobe/Costume are running through outfits with guests. And Design have boards to show and tell. There’s hugs and hale fellow well met, and laughter. So much laughter. And by some demented twist of good fortune you have found yourself a part of this.

The monumental privilege of it.  My God.

And then the second hand sweeps round to ten o’clock and the room falls silent, and all the nonsense and the anxiety and the turmoil and the fussing and fighting just falls away, and we’re all pulling together in service of something hopefully greater than ourselves.

The pandemic put an end to that – as it put an end to so much else of far greater weight. So we never got a ‘last read’ – or rather we did, but didn’t realise it was the final time we were ever to be all gathered together in one room.

But Base remained – the dynamic of being at Production Base on a studio day.   Everyone with their part to play. Electric mayhem and marshalled chaos. Those ‘whispered conversations in overcrowded hallways’. The silence on the floor as you creep around in the shadows off camera. ‘Video Village’ – where Wardrobe/Costume and Hair and Make-Up foregather to watch the world’s tiniest monitors. The skill and craft that everyone – cast and crew – brings to the party.

Design. Sound. Lights. Props. Chippies. Sparks. Camera. Unit drivers. Catering. Runners with the thankless – and often far worse – task of ‘locking off’ roads on location – so that a modern car or pedestrian doesn’t go pootling through the back of a period shot. Our editors. The incredible work done in the post-houses. From each according to their gifts.

All of it marshalled film by film by our directors, and series by series by our producers who artfully wrangled the thing into being – Dan McCulloch; Camille Gatin; Tom Mullens; Helen Ziegler; John Phillips and Neil Duncan who went Cox and Box on Series 5; Deanne Cunningham on Series 6; Jim Levison across 7 & 8 with C. Webber Co-Pro, and finally, Charlotte Webb producing and Joe Shrubb coming in as Co-Pro on this last run of films. Got that? There will be a written paper. They have been aided and abetted across these nine series by Line Producers – the unsinkable Helga Dowie and, I think since late Series 5 or early Series 6 the unflappable Matthew Hamilton with one time First Ad Nick Brown doing a trio and Carolyn Parry-Jones running a quick single – while Betsan Morris Evans knocked one to the boundary as Post Production Producer in 2014.

I’m mindful of so many thanks that I’d like to make, but I fear it would test the patience of your readership past breaking. But I can’t let the moment pass without thanking my Script Editors – who have saved my bacon and show the show more times than you could possibly imagine. In batting order – on OVERTURE – wonderful Tom Winchester; then, the great Sam Costin who set an impossibly high benchmark, and kept me sane and alive through Series 1-3. Best beloved Drama Queen Amy Thurgood who came in to bat across Series 4-and an epically long Series 5. Lovely Paul Tester – who had the briefest tenure proper of all my companions on Series 6. Then my own sospan bach Charlotte Webber on Series 7 and sort of Series 8, though she ducked out half-way through FILM 2 to AP, when Uju Enendu stepped bravely into the breach. And then on this final run – having ascended to the Purple – Charlotte kind of wore two hats. And wore them effortlessly.

I think I said to you previously that I’ll likely never have another sandbox like this to play in again. I can’t think of anywhere else I could have done half the things we’ve attempted in Endeavour. And credit for the lion’s share of that belongs to the Mammoths. Principally, the Skipper – Drama Head Cook and Bottle-Washer Damien Timmer, has been incredibly supportive of my madnesses. Michele Buck who made so much of it happen across the early days. Rebecca Keane – and her wonderful story mind. Tom Mullens during his tenure first as producer and then as Exec.. And most recently Helen Ziegler who may just be made entirely of sunshine. Jon Williams and James Penny taking care of the Grown-Up Stuff – logistic and legal – that really never gets enough credit, but without which…

There’s one more thing without which Endeavour would never have been Endeavour, nor Morse Morse, nor Lewis Lewis – and that is the breathtaking music, a flawless blend of perfectly curated major and minor classical and operatic pieces and original scores – now over a hundred of them – a labour of love and supreme artistry originated and sustained over the best part of thirty years by Barrington Pheloung before – with his untimely passing – the world of music lost one of its brightest and most beloved sons, at which point composing duties on Endeavour were taken up seamlessly by Matthew Slater whose scores have built on and enriched that extraordinary legacy while adding to its lustre with something that has become uniquely his. For my part, I’ve had the joy of providing him with lyrics for pieces ranging from the sublime – our Venetian opera, translated into ‘old Italian’ by Nico Rosetti – to the ridiculous – a jingle to promote road safety, ‘If the Pelican Can Then So Can You!’  Surely amongst Mister Bright’s finest hours.

And then you come to the sharp end. An incredible cast assembled by Casting Director Susie Parriss that any writer would be blessed to write for. Jimmy Bradshaw brought Max’s tender humanity to life and matched it with his own, leavening even the darkest moments with good humour, restoring dignity to the dead, and bringing comfort to the living in even the most tragic of circumstances. It’s never easy to inhabit a heritage role, but such is Jimmy’s talent that he has made Endeavour’s Max all his own, while leaving any happy remembrances by the audience of Morse’s Max not only untroubled, but inarguably enhanced.

Riggers had me at ‘Hello, matey!’ – effortlessly filling those estimable boots and being always the one man you wanted to see coming round the corner in a pinch. Straight out of Drama College and straight into blue serge at Cowley nick. Sean Rigby was Jim Strange from the moment he first appeared on the casting tape in his three piece suit.  And what a fine, fine, infinitely subtle performance he’s given. Burnishing a heritage character with an additional depth and nuance that can only enrich any enjoyment of his later incarnation.

It’s impossible to imagine Bright’s journey from borderline martinet to this quietly heroic, decent man with such a soundless depth to his soul being credible in the hands of anyone but Anton Lesser. Who knew? Not me. But sometimes you see something in a performance and it makes you recalibrate your plans. I think with Anton and Bright it was there early on – and it’s his marriage and the tragedy of Dulcie, the lost child. With regard to the former circumstance, it would have been very easy to laugh at the veiled hints of his apparent cuckolding – I think in SWAY it came to the fore, though there may have been earlier nods – but Anton’s choices, ever wise, about how to deliver that material turned it into something utterly heart-breaking. I suppose it’s with PREY – after the events of NEVERLAND for which he blamed himself desperately – that one starts to see the change, which reaches its apotheosis in DEGUELLO. A man with a big hat, and an even bigger heart. Vivat Reginald! Vivat Lesser!

As to the Editrix of the Oxford Mail? There something of Ariel, that tricksy spirit, about Dorothea Frazil – a mysterious, playful quality which Abigail Thaw brought to the role right from that very first scene. Part Jiminy Cricket, part Puck, part Passepartout, with just a pinch of Cheshire Cat, but forever Endeavour’s lucky penny — turning up when least expected to lend wisdom or comfort, counsel or encouragement – often all those things at once. Our guardian angels don’t always announce themselves. It’s been a delight to write for her — as it was to write for her Dad. Beyond an abundance of talent, class and sheer presence, they share a disinclination to offer Notes on the text, a particular and admirable family trait that commends itself enormously to writers.  

Which brings me to the Thursdays. A pinch of Larkins, a touch of the Huggetts, and a gigantic slice of Coward – in inspiration at least. I suppose Private Lives and Blithe Spirit and all the witty repartee and amusing songs across the Long Weekend are how people think of him now – if they think of him at all – but The Master wrote those profoundly moving evocations of people and their lives at the other end of the social scale, which – after all – was where Coward had come from himself. I’m thinking of Bernard Miles and John Mills characters’ families in In Which We Serve, and of course the Sunday afternoon telly wonder of This Happy Breed. Celia Johnson – Dame Celia Johnson – gracing both and, of course – Brief Encounter which has been such a touchstone for Endeavour. The delivery of her speech about the Torrin – her husband’s ship — in In Which We Serve just about steals the picture out from under everyone else. Not a dry eye. So – I guess that’s where the Thursdays sprang from. Those worlds – or the last echo of the same in which one grew up in the 1960s. Those values. That decency. London Pride.

It was so lovely to have Jack Bannon back for this final run of stories. As the eponymous star of Pennyworth with such enormous demands on his time and talent it was terribly gracious and generous of him to return to Casa Thursday when he could so easily have left us twisting in the wind. A mark of the man. It’s only now just struck me how his line about how small the Thursday house seems to the returning Sam must have been a little bit the same for Jack. I’m just so touched that he came home one last time.

As for Miss Thursday – where to begin. Youth, and optimism, and courage and hope.  She was the changing times. At least my own doubtless ham-fisted and ham-splained man-splained albeit sincere attempt to have one young woman’s emotional and political evolution across the period embody a generational desire for change. Inside a whodunit show. Fools rush in… Happily, Sara Vickers’ pitch perfect, flawlessly judged performance saved my blushes, and I shall be forever grateful.

I touched on Win Thursday earlier – but whatever my subtextual intentions, which I’ve gone into at length, it’s Caroline O’Neill who has intuitively winnowed that out from dialogue and stage directions which are oftimes gnomic to say the least. But Caro has an incredible feel for identifying and expressing exactly what I’m saying with Win through what I’m not saying. Such is her skill and sensitivity, her craft and art. She also makes a mean pot of Jam.

Then there’s the man in the other hat. Neither white nor black – but usually some shade of grey. Roger Allam’s Fred Thursday – the unknown mentor before the acknowledged McNutt. I still find it impossible to believe that my suggestion to the Mammoths became a reality. That it went from seeing Rog first in a biopic about Cromwell – which blew my socks off – to that unforgettable night at The Globe at the close of the Season watching him tear up that stage for seven hours or so as Falstaff, and then to Fred. It was a force of nature up there. Staggering. And as our own Fred Thursday. Those eyes. That voice.  A gift for any writer. To have that incredible instrument at your disposal. For eleven years. Don’t pinch me just yet. I’m not quite ready to leave that dream. Always hilarious to hear Rog say how he wouldn’t have signed on if he knew how long the tour of duty was going to be. Well – the race is nearly run.

Which brings me at last to Shaun Evans – we’ve joked about it together so often that it became a kind of shorthand – I don’t know whether it’s true or just another story or bit of television legend, but – and I can’t remember how it first came up between us, or in what context, but I quoted that Adam West line to him – you know, ‘The show’s called “Batman”.’  Which, I guess originally – if it’s true – was Mr West marking his territory, and just gently reminding everyone of his place in the scheme of things.  

For the record, Shaun’s never been in the least territorial. But the fact remains, the show’s called Endeavour. He has been since we shot in 2011 the hard point upon which the ultimate and absolute weight of the enterprise has rested. That’s not to diminish anyone’s role. But for the record, if I’d been hit by a 33 bus say – the show would rightly have gone on. The same could not be said of Shaun. He’s worn that responsibility very lightly – and been incredibly resilient and good-natured. These things have a lot of moving parts made of flesh and blood and feeling and insecurity and anxiety and pride, and the days are very long – because it doesn’t just end at the end of a shooting day – most people are looking at another four or six or in extreme cases eight hours of prep for the following day’s work. Actors have lines to learn – directors need to go over the next day’s shoot – producers have to call writers and tell them that a location has fallen through, and can we have pages to cover this by first thing, or whatever it is that producers do. Seriously – producers do so much. So much. But somehow Shaun’s moved through all of that with such incredible grace, and artistry, and above all things – his has been the most sustained act of creative and personal integrity. He has lived the show to the exclusion of all things else. And now he can breathe out. But wherever he goes next and whatever he does, there will always be some corner of a domestic and foreign programming schedule that will be forever Endeavour.

Beyond cast and crew – is the Skipper, Drama Don and Chief Tusker at Mammoth, Damien Timmer whom I’ve known man and boy and worked with on and off since the mid-90s. Beyond any of us – Endeavour is his baby. He has been midwife and mother to every moment of it. Working across every aspect of production with an eye for detail that leaves ordinary mortals in the dust. And somehow he brings this level of creative interrogation to all his shows. How he finds time to eat and sleep I will never know. But it’s been an enormous privilege and a personal joy to work alongside him these past years. Partners in crime. Quite literally. And then some.  

What’s been created these past eleven years is the sum of all that expertise and care outlined above, and rightly belongs to everyone aforementioned. They magicked every frame of it into life.

There’s a beautiful notion expressed by Sondheim in ‘Finishing the Hat’ from Sunday in the Park With George which sums it up. I’d hope he’d forgive my tweaking it from first person singular to first person plural.

“We made a hat where there never was a hat.”  

That’s it.  And that’s all.

We made a hat where there never was a hat.

Who could hope to do more?

DAMIAN: After all these interviews over the years, I don’t know how to thank you – perhaps any more than you can tell me what Thursday’s Wednesday sandwich is! Instead Russ, bespoke writer, purveyor of fine manuscripts, and, truly, the best and wisest of men, I shall simply say – as we’ve done countless times before – see you down the road.

RUSS: Too kind, old man. Too kind. It’s been a pleasure. And enormous thanks are due to you for your forbearance and indefatigability across these many many years. And for giving me the opportunity to look at these stories and the process whereby they came into being with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight – which, like the other thing, always lends enchantment. Thanks for going the distance. To the end, then?

DAMIAN: To the end…

‘“Do you think I’m wasting your time, Lewis?”

Lewis was nobody’s fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity.

“Yes, sir.”

An engaging smile crept across Barcroft’s mouth. He thought they would get on well together…’

– Ever so slightly misquoted from Last Bus to Woodstock with apologies to our late friend and inspiration, Mr. Colin Dexter.

Interview and introduction (‘Drinks at the Randolph’) copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2023