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THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2018: Russell Lewis Part IV

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EXT. WOODS/GINGERBREAD HOUSE – DAY 1

Late afternoon. ENDEAVOUR makes his way through the woods. At last, he reaches, an ancient dwelling that seems to have grown out of the earth itself. Mossy. ENDEAVOUR comes to the door. A raggedy broomstick leant against the wall. ENDEAVOUR knocks.

ENDEAVOUR: Hello? Miss Chattox?

ENDEAVOUR pushes open the door. Darkness…

ENDEAVOUR (cont’d): Good afternoon. My name is…

ENDEAVOUR reacts to something out of view — backs away.

The business end of a single barrel SHOTGUN emerges from the gloom…

DOWSABLE (O.S.): Morse. That’s your name, isn’t it?

… the weapon held steadily in the hands of the formidable DOWSABLE CHATTOX, (80s).

DOWSABLE (cont’d): Morse. I’ve been expecting you.

– HARVEST (P.35 Readthrough Draft)

THE OTHER PLACE

Exclusive ENDEAVOUR interview

With Russell Lewis

Interview copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2018

~~~

With thanks to Rosemary Woodhouse

DAMIAN: And I’ve been expecting you Mr… Lewis. Way through the woods indeed! Anyway, who had the wonderful idea to cast Sheila Hancock?

RUSS: It’s been a twinkle in our eye for some time. But the 30th Anniversary seemed to be the right time. It probably took us that long to pluck up our nerve.

DAMIAN: Did you meet her at any point?

RUSS: I’ve met her before – but not during the shoot.

DAMIAN: Chattox? A nod to the Pendle Witch trials?

RUSS: Indeed.

EXT. BRAMFORD MERE

DOROTHEA: Good morning, Miss Chattox. Dorothea Frazil. Oxford Mail. I interviewed you a few years ago, about your battle with the Power Station.

DOWSABLE: I remember you.

DOROTHEA: Still fighting the good fight, I see.

DOWSABLE: If you mean they haven’t seen me off yet, then, no – they haven’t. Nor will they.

DAMIAN: Please tell me this scene was actually filmed and still exists somewhere?

RUSS: I’m not sure it was shot. There was a lot of what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over on this one. I think I only became aware of what hadn’t been shot after the event. Our time with Sheila was quite contained – and this may have been a casualty of the schedule.

DAMIAN: I found HARVEST to be a game of two halves; the latter had something of The China Syndrome about it but it was the former element that I was particularly taken with involving Morris Men and their Horse and Fool which evoked films such as The Wicker Man. We’ve spoken more generally about the horror genre before but what specific influences from what we now term “Rural” or “Folk” Horror might we see in HARVEST that contributed to that strange and yet curiously British and creepy atmosphere?

RUSS: Well – obviously – as you’ve identified – The Wicker Man.

The Wicker Man

S4:E4 Harvest

Above photo kindly provided by Charlotte Mitchell

But also Robin Redbreast and a bit of Nigel Kneale’s Beasts. There were a couple of Brian Clemens’ Thriller that played with that ‘something nasty in the woodshed’, thing. One that featured an old family friend John (Juan) Moreno – who you’ll probably know best as Bond’s contact, Luigi Ferrara, in For Your Eyes Only. Cloven hoofs a go-go.

Robin Redbreast

DAMIAN: Also possibly relevant to HARVEST, to what extent would you agree that Professor Bernard Quatermass is the single most important and influential character in British Science Fiction?

RUSS: Did he pave the way for a certain Gallifreyan? Quite possibly. The TV Quatermass casts a massive shadow – but most of it even before my time. Quatermass and the Pit is a classic — but until the Euston Films/John MIlls version – what was that? ‘79-ish? – he was more a character one got second-hand from memories of the previous generation.

Andrew Keir in Hammer’s third adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s work, Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

DAMIAN: Many great actors have played Quatermass over the years but who would you say gave the definitive screen performance?

RUSS: I liked Andre Morrell, but probably Andrew Keir — the TV and film incarnations in Pit — which is probably my favourite story.

INT. THURSDAY HOUSE. HALL/LIVING ROOM – NIGHT 1

Onscreen – black and white: a rangey Dennis Hopper-alike, at the wheel of an open top car on a lost highway. Poor Man’s Process with much over-steering of the wheel.

NARRATOR (V.O.): Meet Edwin Brewster, age thirty-five. Occupation, drifter. A nobody from nowhere, about to make an unscheduled stop in a town not found on any map.

WIN watches TV — not taking it in.

NARRATOR (V.O.): For he has entered a dimension that lies somewhere between sleep and waking. Dream and nightmare. Life and death. It’s a region we call, ‘The Other Place.’

Opening sig for ‘The Other Place’ – theramin and surf guitar.

DAMIAN: You could have made up any TV show and yet you chose something reminiscent of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. Why?

RUSS: It seemed fun to do. And played into the overall theme. Originally – the American couple were a nod to a particular Ira Levin novel that came out in ‘67.

I think there was more material to do with them trying for a baby… So between them, and the paganism — we were setting up a blind to what was really going on. The Other Place thing was just underlining that deceit. But – yes, it was our salute to Rod Serling – who casts a giant shadow.

DAMIAN: What’s your all-time favourite episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits?

RUSS: Too many to choose from. I like deserted town stories – so Where Is Everybody? – the Pilot, I believe – would have to be up there. And Stopover in a Quiet Town also falls into that category.

Where is Everybody?

Much of The Avengers has a similar vibe. A lack of Supporting Artists in the background lends everything a slightly surreal and dreamlike quality. How much of that was a budget call which dictated a creative decision, I don’t know — but in my memory at least – it seems very much a part of the the show’s DNA.

E/I. ENDEAVOUR’S FLAT. BASEMENT – DAY 3

ENDEAVOUR is fingerprinted. SCENE of CRIME dusting for prints. TREWLOVE, back in uniform, fingers along ENDEAVOUR’s mantel — finds the photograph of ENDEAVOUR as a boy with his mother.

STRANGE: Little toerags. Sorry, matey.

ENDEAVOUR: One of those things. We see enough of it.

STRANGE: Yeh, but you’re one of our own. What d’they nick?

ENDEAVOUR: Radio. Record player. My signed Rosalind Calloway LP. Beside that there was nothing worth taking.

STRANGE: Why they smashed the place up.

Amongst the wreckage — STRANGE spies, the JAMES LAST LP he bought for ENDEAVOUR as a house warming present. He picks it up, slips the LP out of its slipcase. Vinyl intact. STRANGE exhales — relieved.

STRANGE: Least this one made it.

ENDEAVOUR: Small mercies.

DAMIAN: While Lewis was obviously mischievously joking when he asked Morse in the original series if the piece of classical music he was playing in the car was Andrew Lloyd Webber (a beautifully played moment), Strange is completely genuine and oblivious with regards to James Last and isn’t it fantastic moments like these that economically sum up almost all we need to know about him and his polar opposite relationship with Endeavour?

RUSS: I suspect their differences are why they get on – in their fashion. Strange makes much more of an effort with their friendship than Endeavour. He’s clearly fond of him – and there’s admiration too, for his abilities. A thoroughly decent cove is old Strange. And the one man you’d want to see coming round the corner if you were ever in a tight pinch.

DAMIAN: If someone asked me if Endeavour would have a picture of his mother I would have, obviously incorrectly, said absolutely not. And yet, there it is in his flat following the burglary, a photograph of Endeavour as a boy with Constance. I thought Endeavour was almost in denial about his past so why would he want to have this sitting in a frame on his mantlepiece?

RUSS: I think it was put there as it was something he recovered from the wreckage and didn’t want to lose. The plan would have been to put it away again once he’d got the place straight. As you say – it’s something that would have been laid up. Out of sight, out of mind. Sometimes we reach to the back of a darkened drawer only to catch our fingers on a forgotten knife.

DAMIAN: Of the many scenes that never made it to the final cut, was it particularly painful to lose Sam’s return home which obviously resulted in him not appearing in the entire fourth series?

RUSS: Yes. We all love Jack B., and miss him around the homestead. But story is always king — and the plan had always been to reflect the changing times by way of the Thursdays changing family circumstances.

DAMIAN: Not that she isn’t genuinely sorry and traumatised, but was there ever a sense for you as a writer, or perhaps between Shaun and Sara in playing the scene, that Joan was using the Wessex Bank robbery and the death of Ronnie Gidderton as an excuse to leave Oxford and escape the conventions and expectations of an almost predetermined life that she’s only half in love with?

RUSS: Mmm. I’m probably a bit more inclined to take her at face value. I don’t think anyone realised quite how deeply Ronnie’s death affected her. She held herself utterly to blame. It was too much for her. She had to get away – but I think the self-imposed exile was also her punishing herself.

EXT. OXFORD – DAY

WIN and SAM on their day out.

WIN: Well, that was nice.

SAM: So, what do you fancy for this after?

WIN: Oh, I don’t mind. You pick. I am glad you’re home, Sam.

SAM: I know.

WIN: I wouldn’t want you to think I wasn’t. Just… with everything.

SAM: She’ll come home. You’ll see. You know Joannie.

WIN: Stubborn. Like her father. You take more after me.

SAM: Well. Some of us have got to be sensible. Right?

SAM slips his arm through WIN’s and they tootle off…

DAMIAN: If Joan does indeed take after her father as is stated in this cut scene, does this perhaps foreshadow even more dark times and trouble ahead?

RUSS: I wouldn’t want to give anything away.

DAMIAN: I thought when I first watched it that there was something about the production design that reminded me of early the Bond films and then there it was in the script when I read it; your description of the Bamford Goldenrod Reactor Building as ‘A Ken Adam fantasy of gantries and walkways towering high above the floor.’

In addition to Fleming obviously, the cinematic Bond owes so much to people like John Barry (for the sound if not composition of the Bond theme – not to mention eleven glorious music scores), Peter Hunt (the innovative editing style and later direction of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and the fines tastes and style of director Terence Young. Visually speaking however, isn’t Ken Adam arguably one of the most significant contributors to the 007 series?

RUSS: Yes. Absolutely. He’s a bit of a touchstone for us — and gets another run out in this series.

DAMIAN: We’ve touched on Bond many times, but remarkably, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you who your favourite Bond is…

RUSS: Easier to pick a favourite Bond movie. Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale is the best of the modern era. Certainly my favourite of his to date. There’s been some great set pieces in the others – but, come on, Mads Mikkelsen for a villain, and Eva Green delivering arguably the most fully realised female character in the franchise. (Dame JD’s ‘M’ notwithstanding.) But – you know – it had pretty incomparable source material to drawn on. Consequently, it felt more faithful to Fleming’s original vision than anything for a long time.

And yet… It’s a dead heat for me with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. With Lazenby’s sole outing maybe just edging it by a period nose. John Barry’s sublime score. Dame Diana Rigg. Telly Savalas turning in the best Blofeld of the classic period. (Apologies to Donald Pleasance). Ilse Steppat’s Irma Bunt. Gabriele Ferzetti. Piz Gloria. The set pieces – the various ski chases and bobsleigh sequence – are sensational. It’s just a first rate adventure/thriller that can be enjoyed on its own terms. I’m a sucker for snow.

The first three Connerys are pretty sacred. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Goldfinger’s blockbuster success set the template in concrete – which is a bit of a pity. Dr. No very much a period piece now. From Russia With Love is a great spy movie, and felt very much its own thing. After Goldfinger, you can pretty much follow the bouncing white dot at the bottom of the screen, knowing exactly how it’s going to unfurl. I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule, but a good number of them thereafter seem locked into the tramlines. The only place left to go is bigger. It starts to creep in with Thunderball, and by the time of You Only Live Twice it’s just massively overblown. Which is probably why OHMSS felt so refreshing – like the reset button had been hit.

The least said about Diamonds Are Forever the better. Great theme song – but otherwise very hard to love. There’s a sourness about it that leaves a nasty taste. Maybe it’s that much of the main section of the film has a Las Vegas setting. It’s suddenly vulgar – reeking of stale cigar smoke and a gambler’s desperation – in a way it never had been before. Bambi and Thumper. Plenty O’Toole. Eek… A sign of the changing times. Tricky Dickie in the Willard Whitehouse, and Watergate just around the corner…

I suppose Ernst Stavro Blofeldd had to be grafted on as the stories were shot out of sequence, and there had to be a pay-off for the ending of OHMSS, but I always preferred the fate of Dr. Shatterhand in the novel of You Only Live Twice.

I guess that’s one of the things I like so much about 007’s latest incarnation. He bleeds.

DAMIAN: I agree with regards to OHMSS which I personally believe to be the best and certainly the most stylish of the series. I’m a huge fan of Lazenby’s 007 and think he did an amazing job especially considering it was possibly one of the most difficult roles in cinema history to take on after Connery. However, for me, he’s in joint first place with another underrated Bond – the magnificent Timothy Dalton. Yeah, his two entries weren’t the best (although I greatly admired the grittiness of License to Kill) but he’s possibly the greatest actor to play Bond. And there’s just something about his look – those eyes – which is how I imagine Bond when I read the novels. Personally, I think they should leave the current franchise alone and simply adapt all of Fleming’s original stories almost word for word, set them in their proper period of the fifties and sixties and adopt the style of From Russia With Love. That said, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson seem to be doing OK without my input.

Anyway, back to Endeavour and the power station, in the script Blake turns to find Endeavour ‘frozen to the stop — staring down between the latticed steps to the ground, floors below’:

BLAKE: Constable.

ENDEAVOUR: Heights. I can’t bloody move.

BLAKE: Vertigo, is it? Poor chap.

DOROTHEA comes across.

DOROTHEA: Just shut your eyes and take my hand. Come on. One foot in front of the other.

Freudian nightmares aside given the circumstances in which she was cast, am I completely wrong is suspecting that Dorothea is attracted to Endeavour – just a little bit?

RUSS: Hate to disappoint you, but I don’t think any of us look on their relationship that way.

DAMIAN: You occasionally recycle scenes that don’t make the cut for future films so, and as much as I would love to because it’s quite a revelation of sorts, I won’t describe it in detail – let’s just call it the lime-juice and gin scene – please tell me you have plans to revisit it?

RUSS: Mmm. Yes. Most of these scenes we’re talking about are character moments — and they’re always the ones to suffer in the cut. I repurpose and redeploy some of them – not out of general indolence – but because they’re important, and shed a light on our heroes and heroines. Plots can change – but the characters still have the same baggage. And it’s nice to see some of that from time to time.

DAMIAN: What can you tell me about FILM 4: COLOURS?

RUSS: Not much. Part of its genesis was a news report that turned up in research – concerning a hairdressers in Oxford. It seemed to fit with our theme for ‘68. Turbulent times. Elsewise – there’s a collision of worlds.

DAMIAN: Russ, thank you very much indeed.

RUSS: You’re welcome.

BRIGHT: Oh – there was one more thing. I have this day received a letter…

[The following scenes appear as originally written in the readthrough draft intercut with those between Endeavour and Joan in hospital which are pretty much how we saw them in the broadcast version and so not included here]

EXT. THURSDAY HOUSE

THURSDAY at the kerb. TAXI there. WIN in the back seat.

WIN: Come on, Fred. We’ll be late.

THURSDAY: Just give him another five minutes.

SAM comes out of the house.

SAM: He [ENDEAVOUR] can’t make it.

THURSDAY: What d’you mean he can’t make it?

SAM: That was him on the phone. Something’s come up.

THURSDAY: I’ll give him ‘Something’s come up’ when I see him.

SAM: Go on. Good luck.

THURSDAY get in the TAXI, which pulls away. SAM watches after them…

EXT. LONDON. THE MALL

A BLACK CAB drives up the MALL towards BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

BRIGHT (V.O.): I am instructed to inform you that Her Majesty The Queen has graciously approved the award of…

INT. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. AUDIENCE CHAMBER

A gloved hand pins the GEORGE MEDAL to THURSDAY’S breast.

BRIGHT (V.O.): …the George Medal to Her entirely well-beloved subject Detective Chief Inspector Frederick Albert Thursday for Special Services in Defence of the Realm…

EXT. BUCKINGHAM PALACE

THURSDAY and WIN outside the palace.

BRIGHT (V.O.): Given the circumstances details pertaining to the award will be neither cited in the Gazette, nor entered into the public record.

WIN inspects the medal.

WIN: ‘For Gallantry’. Get you.

THURSDAY: Fancy the pictures? As we’re here. There’s a Lee Marvin at the Gaumont.

WIN: War, is it?

THURSDAY: Pie n mash after, if you play your cards right. I might even let you take me home.

THURSDAY slips his arm through WIN’s and they head off.

DAMIAN: Every week I’ve tested your patience by asking why such and such a scene was cut but again, this is even better than what we saw onscreen isn’t it?

RUSS: What can I tell you? We’re always up against it for time. I think in this instance we did shoot this sequence — but it didn’t make the cut. I write them pretty much to length — and then there’ll be requests for additional material — something that’s not landing just so that needs help, or something that hasn’t been realised quite as well as we envisioned — and the original stuff gets squeezed out. Perhaps one day — when we get to the end — we’ll look at them again, and do definitive, unexpurgated cuts. Or at least package together all the out-takes – and moments that didn’t make it. You have to be careful though — the tone of something can change hugely in the edit. Structure too. And some of them wouldn’t bear the reintroduction of those excised scenes.

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2018: Russell Lewis Part II

EXT. OXFORD COLLEGE. QUAD – DAY

The topless towers of Oxonium. Not a cloud to spoil the view.

TILT DOWN to BIRD’S EYE VIEW – wet flagstones… rain.

Coloured umbrellas pass below. A song and dance number begins. An ‘Outside Broadcast’ for a ‘Light Entertainment Special’ featuring MIMI, a chanteuse. HUGE STYROFOAM LETTERS spell out her name. DANCERS in coloured RAIN GEAR splash their way around the quad as…

MIMI: Like summer tempests came my tears, love, when I learned you’d been untrue. But after rain must come a rainbow. So, until then here’s what I’ll do…

PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH!

(or Les infortunes de la vertu)

An exclusive ENDEAVOUR interview

Composed and conducted by Damian Michael Barcroft

Lyrics by Russell Lewis

~~~

With thanks to Lorenz Milton Hart and Richard Charles Rogers

& Matthew Slater for the images of RAK Studios

DAMIAN: I remember the day well and, of course, that bloody song – talk about involuntary musical imagery! And good God, wasn’t it hot?

RUSS: Extremely. The dancers in their plastic macs, sou’westers and good quality rubber boots had my sympathy. As did Sharlette – our wonderful vocalist. But yes – perhaps our most blisteringly hot shooting day since we began in 2011.

DAMIAN: Aside from Tiger-gate, was opening an episode of Endeavour with a pop song and dance routine one of the most bold and surprising creative decisions thus far?

RUSS: Ha! Always with the tiger. It wasn’t for me. Like Mister Walken – I’m a hoofer at heart. The sequence began as a salute to Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, and evolved from there.

DAMIAN: I’ve said this before but you’re a very modest fellow, often frustratingly so for the purposes of these interviews, but let us simply assume, for the benefit of this piece, that you are indeed a VERY accomplished and successful screenwriter. The songs you wrote for CANTICLE, particularly ‘Make Believe’, were extremely catchy and, if we didn’t know better, genuinely sounded like a popular hit from the period. So, at what point did you feel confident as a lyricist and discover these hidden musical talents?

RUSS: Well – like the man said, I’ve a lot to be modest about. As a youth I used to weep in Rod Argent’s Keyboard Shop on Denmark Street. The usual teenage thing – bands; song-writing; colour me Les McQueen. That particular creative muscle hasn’t been exercised for a long time, but if one has any facility for that sort of thing – it’s a bit like riding a bike. And, of course, I was very fortunate to have Matt Slater on hand to do the heavy lifting.

DAMIAN: Are you familiar with another song entitled ‘Make Beileve’ from Show Boat?

RUSS: I haven’t seen Show Boat for decades. I landed on that for a title as it was a massive hidden clue and a pointer towards the dangerous delusion at the heart of the matter.

DAMIAN: Wouldn’t it have been a bit naff and possibly even embarrassing if the songs weren’t up to scratch, and if that had been the case, would you have had someone else rewrite the material or perhaps scrap it all together?

RUSS: Seeing as much of the story depended on a credible soundtrack, I can’t imagine we’d have scrapped it. We just had to apply ourselves.

DAMIAN: Matthew told me you wrote some sections of the song in the script but then he asked you to write more verses to help him complete the music which you both did in about thirty minutes? Thirty minutes! This can’t be true can it?

RUSS: I think it was about that. We were clearly dragging our feet that day.

DAMIAN: And is it really true that two actors during one of the playback scenes were trying to Google one of the songs to see who originally wrote it back in the sixties?

RUSS: I did hear that this was the case.

DAMIAN: You visited the recording of the songs at RAK Studios, what was it like to hear your lyrics performed alongside a rhythm section, brass and strings?

RUSS: Enormous fun. Like Abbey Road, it’s a place with an incredible history. So – hugely exciting. The place was packed. Sharlette; the boys from The Wildwood; Shaun came down; Helen Ziegler [producer]; Michael Lennox, the Director. And I was there with my son James. All of us cluttering up the control room – getting under the feet of the engineers, &c. It was a very special day. And in the middle of all the madness was Matt Slater – keeping his head and getting on with business. It was a privilege to see him working, as always. Whatever madness we’ve thrown at him over the last couple of series, he never fails to deliver all we’ve asked for, and always a great deal more besides.

DAMIAN: Did you celebrate with Rum, Scotch and Coke?

RUSS: I would refer you to Endeavour’s opening line in First Bus to Woodstock.

DAMIAN: In addition to Tony Hancock and those bloody Carry On films, almost every set of our interviews contain some mention of The Beatles. Can you remember when they split up and were you one of those fans who retreated to their bedroom in tears?

RUSS: I would have been seven – so… unlikely.

DAMIAN: And what about when Zayn left One Direction?

RUSS: I’m still mourning Geri’s departure from the Spice Girls.

DAMIAN: Do you listen to much modern music and what was the last album you purchased?

RUSS: I listen to all sorts of things. iTunes tells me my last purchase was a movie soundtrack that was in heavy rotation during the writing of MUSE.

DAMIAN: The first few films including First Bus to Woodstock, Girl, Fugue and probably quite a few more since feature typewriters and very particular mention of typefaces (a Smith Corona Deluxe Electric typewriter and Elite Number 66 typeface in Canticle) is this yet another example of your curious fascinations?

RUSS: A writer’s pre-occupation. I started on type-writers. Rewrites were a particular treat. Change a word or a line – re-type the entire page.

DAMIAN: Again, and far too many to mention them all, there are lots of literary and cultural references but I’m especially intrigued by connections to The Wind in the Willows which feature in CANTICLE. Is Kenneth Grahame’s classic a particular favourite?

RUSS: Published only six years before all the old certainties were blown to hell by the Great War, there’s something about its prelapsarian idyll that seems to connect with the back to The Garden innocence of the flower-children.

And the tragic death of Alistair, a.k.a. ‘Mouse’, the Grahames’ only child, while up at Oxford, to whom The Wind in the Willows had first been told as a bedtime story, lends another layer of connection. It doesn’t take much detective work to get from there to The Piper At the Gates of Dawn.

DAMIAN: And there’s some interesting narrative parallels with Cherubim and Seraphim from the original series isn’t there?

RUSS: Very much so. I think Morse’s comment to Lewis about his never having taken recreational drugs still stands. Endeavour was poisoned with hallucinogens. I draw a distinction.

DAMIAN: And finally before we move on from the references and nods, are you an avaricious consumer of the Marquis de Sade’s work?

RUSS: Essential bedtime reading.

DAMIAN: Let’s now talk about some of the characters. Given his dislike for hippies and Germans, the fact that he won’t even hug his own son in public as he leaves for the army and generally displays certain personality characteristics that are probably out of touch even in the sixties, isn’t it somewhat surprising to find that Thursday has such liberal views on recreational drugs and homosexuality?

RUSS: It didn’t strike me as particularly liberal. He states that he smoked hash as a fact, and that it didn’t do much for him. That’s hardly an endorsement. He upholds the law that he’s obliged to uphold. I think the war probably put a lot of things into perspective for him. When you’ve looked death in the eye, you tend not to sweat over the small stuff. Judge not.

DAMIAN: Thursday has a difference of opinion on homosexulaity in an unfilmed scene in which Strange says that ‘poofs’ are ‘not right’ and ‘neither use nor ornament’, to which Thursday replies ‘We had one in the platoon. North Africa. Harris. Bravest man I ever knew… Sniper [shot him at] Second El Alamein. I closed his eyes. Brave to the last. If he’d made it back to Civvy Street, I might’ve had cause to nick him. And that can’t be right. Comes down to it, we all bleed red’. Is it realistic that a soldier would have been openly gay during WW2 or is this something the chap simply told Thursday in confidence?

RUSS: If you’ll forgive me – there’s a danger of overthinking this. I can’t imagine it was a conversation that ever took place. There’s nothing new about don’t ask, don’t tell. It was an assumption made, I’m sure, based upon Harris’s demeanour – as right or wrong as that might seem to us now. Had Thursday served with… I don’t know… our own Charles Highbank – the window dresser from Burridges, played by best beloved Adrian Schiller – it’s somewhat unlikely Thursday would have mistaken him for a raging heterosexual. There’s really no more to it than that. But I think the important thing here is that such experiences – living cheek by jowl with a man, sharing the same foxhole – would have made Thursday, and others, question the orthodoxy – and indeed the law – that invited – if not required – them to view such men with suspicion and contempt.

DAMIAN: Were Strange’s comments cut for fear the audience might find them offensive?

RUSS: Never. No – for length.

DAMIAN: Is there sometimes a certain danger that television is rewriting history and is it convincing that most of the main characters of period dramas happen to share the contemporary views of the people who write them?

RUSS: Which is why I had Strange express the views I did. Had it made the cut, it would have given some of the more predictable period context to offset Thursday’s view.

DAMIAN: I’m not sure if you’re allowed to say but to what extent was Mrs. Pettybon based on Mary Whitehouse?

RUSS: Mrs.Pettybon was a composite – much like The Wildwood. The inspiration was Edna Welthorpe (Mrs) – Joe Orton’s alter-ego – guardian of public morals — created in the 50s long before Mrs.W came to public prominence. What we were looking to present was a type, of which Mrs.Whitehouse was perhaps the most well known – but she was certainly not alone in her crusading. It was an attitude one was holding up for inspection, rather than an individual. As I’ve possibly mentioned before, ‘67 saw the death of Orton, Brian Epstein and Joe Meek. This, together with the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, as a result of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, was in my mind when I started developing the story.

The packaging of a certain kind of manufactured rock and roll band – the management keeping wives and girlfriends out of the picture, so as not to puncture the myth of their potential romantic availability to the young fandom, lest it affect record sales, &c, was also a building block. The morality of that deceit seemed worth examining – just as much as the moral soapboxing of Mrs.Pettybon.

You know – we’re in the whodunit business, and the notion of a bigger, darker – at least for the period – secret, beyond that being presented on the surface, is key.

But the other big jumping off point was in thinking about whether it would be possible to murder someone without killing them. If you change their personality, their cognitive abilities, irreversibly – say through spiking them with hallucinogens – it could be argued that the person they were beforehand has effectively been – for want of a better term – ‘murdered’. The period certainly contained enough ‘acid casualties’ to make it something worth exploring.

DAMIAN: Were the OCD characteristics displayed by Mrs. Pettybon such as the extreme scrubbing of her hands a bit much and didn’t she run a slight risk of becoming something of religious caricature?

RUSS: Out, damned spot! She did drive her husband to suicide – so she had something to be guilty about. How does one depict someone who is a religious caricature? The point is that she wasn’t genuinely religious at all. The dissonance between her professed faith and her eagerness to cast the first stone seemed to me vast and obvious. There was an exchange which we lost from the final cut between Mrs.P and the band’s manager after their appearance on Julian Calendar’s show. It seemed to my mind to sum up what she was about.

MRS.PETTYBON: Is our car here?

ENDEAVOUR:  Yes, yes, it’s, er… A taxi.

MRS.PETTYBON: What happened to the nice car that brought us?

RALPH:  That’s showbusiness, Mrs.Pettybon.

MRS.PETTYBON: I’m not in showbusiness.

RALPH:  Actually, dear, you are. Boys.

RALPH loads his charges into the TAXI.

She was a fame hungry charlatan who would turn up to the opening of an envelope. That was the point. The only appropriate response is ridicule and derision.

DAMIAN: Her daughter, Bettina, is yet another character who has something of a crush on Endeavour, what do you think makes him so attractive to women – especially those who might best be described as vulnerable or troubled?

RUSS: That he looks remarkably like Shaun Evans possibly has something to do with it.

DAMIAN: Why were references to Bright’s spasms of pain deleted from this and the previous film, surely their inclusion would have made the events of the next film more dramatic and less out of the blue?

RUSS: Length – again – very likely. What can I tell you?

DAMIAN: There were two beautiful moments that appeared in the script but sadly didn’t make it on film as originally written: the first has Thursday hold the hallucinating Endeavour gently rocking him back and forth as he calls out ‘Fred?’, to which Thursday replies: ‘That’s right, son. That’s right. It’s Fred. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.’ I’m sure this would have elevated an already great scene to one of the most touching in the entire series so why cut it?

RUSS: On the day, that was the way it went on the floor.

DAMIAN: The second is the corned beef scene in the hospital at the end of the film which originally began with the following ‘ENDEAVOUR – a whiter shade of pale. Somewhere between this world and the next. An angel’s wings brush his cheek. A pair of soft lips find his own’ and Joan says off screen ‘Look after yourself, Morse.’ Again, this is beautiful so why lose it?

RUSS: As with the previous. ‘Ask me no more…’

DAMIAN: So, while CANTICLE revealed your flair for lyrics, what can you tell us about CARTOUCHE and what new tricks or talents might you still have hidden up your sleeve?

RUSS: Hmm. I don’t know about new tricks. Just an old dog’s selection of fire-sale novelties, gee-gaws and bagatelles from a well-travelled sample case of deceit and legerdemain. Umm… What can I tell you about CARTOUCHE… Tonight’s late-night double-feature examines – amongst other things — the fading grandeur of the local flea-pit. Other aspects of the story were a sobering reminder that all too often the more things change, the more they stay the same. So… Two for the Circle. And don’t forget your popcorn.

DAMIAN: Will there be any more singing and dancing in this series?

RUSS: Some.

‘Why did I write this article? It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose. It was to warn you, reader, if you should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them—avoid them as you would a pestilence.