DAMIAN: Russ thinks it was either a sunny Saturday or Sunday morning in late July that he began writing his original libretto for what was then ‘The Devil’s Bride or A Cure for Love’. When did you first hear about his plans to create these opera pieces for Endeavour?
MATTHEW: I think possibly when Russ and I had one of our periodic suppers in London. At the time, I didn’t grasp the gravity of what Russ was suggesting. We mused about the idea of giving away the entire plot of the series within the opera’s libretto in old Italian. I didn’t realise then how big a task that was.
DAMIAN: So was this before or after he had actually written the scripts for series seven?
MATTHEW: No, the opera came out during that process. I remember trying not to put too much pressure on Russ’ time as I was fully aware he was under the usual massive amount of pressure delivering revisions on scripts etc.
DAMIAN: I believe you and Russ agreed on the style and period together but what were the deciding factors in ultimately choosing baroque?
MATTHEW: We did. Russ and I spoke of a style akin to Pergolesi’s early operas. When we reviewed his early operas, they seemed to set the staging ideas for those scenes set in Venice incredibly well.
DAMIAN: How, and at what point, did Nicoló Rosetti become involved?
MATTHEW: Nico is a close friend of mine, native Italian, Cambridge Masters and more degrees than you can shake a mortarboard hat at. I asked him whether he’d take on the challenge of translating the text into old Italian, to which he very kindly jumped at the chance. Nico had to do some work with the original text from Russ to set in the context that works with the translation to old Italian, hence why we had to translate it back for me to work. I was working in Venice when I started composing the opera, and Nico came onboard simultaneously. When back in London, we worked together in the process of translation and composition ensuring we were as authentic as possible.
DAMIAN: To what extent did Nicoló’s translation shape the phraseology – weren’t there certain words that didn’t directly translate or wouldn’t have been said during the period? – and did this affect the tempo of your score at all?
MATTHEW: Massively. This was a huge intellectual undertaking, so his knowledge and experience very much led me. Luckily, Nico was also a fan of opera, so he was fully aware of how things should be structured. His input was crucial for making it as authentic as it turned out.
DAMIAN: How much time did you have to compose and record the music for series seven and how much of this was devoted to the opera sequences?
MATTHEW: The opera was composed during the early stages of production as it was required to be shot on set from film 1. We had a few months before the shoots, so whilst it was a huge undertaking, we had the time to do it properly with period instruments and period tuning. What was also incredibly handy for film 3, in which the bulk of the opera is on screen, was being directed by the wonderful Kate Saxon, an experienced stage director in her own right. We were very lucky with that. I remember being in a theatre in Catford / Venice seeing Kate put together our opera, and I got very excited. This is something I’d like to do for real, I thought.
Matthew with the director, Kate Saxon
DAMIAN: Were you able to spend much time researching baroque opera and are there any examples that might have inspired a particular texture or flavour to your music?
MATTHEW: I did get enough time to research and across many periods, from Pergolesi to Verdi. It was a great experience to study some incredible and inspiring works.
DAMIAN: From simply listening to your music, I know that you continuously strive to be bolder and more experimental while still remaining true to the Endeavour universe, but I also know from our previous interviews that while you always add something new to every score – I think you use the term score personality – you’re still able to capture exactly what the directors, producers and, of course Russ, want from each film. However, in addition to continuing to write television scores that are indistinguishable from big-budget Hollywood movies – such as the ‘March of the Mummy’ theme from CARTOUCHE (S5:E2) – you’re also able to create music for original songs that sound exactly like pop hits from the era – ‘Make Believe You Love Me’ from CANTICLE (S4:E2) for example – and yet, while I obviously acknowledge and greatly appreciate your achievements as a composer, I can’t help but wonder if the prospect of certain monumental challenges such as composing original music for a baroque opera are just so daunting that even you might occasionally pause for a moment and doubt if you’ll be able to pull it off?
MATTHEW: Oh, heck yes!! This was the closest I’ve been to saying, “nope, can’t be done!” But, sitting back, pen and paper, a few bars come out, then a few more, and finally 500 bars of music sit in front of me, ready to record. Then, we placed it in front of four outstanding singers and a baroque LMO orchestra, and suddenly we had a new opera from the 1720’s!! It’s pretty remarkable. It was a massive team effort, as it always is in the Endeavour family.
DAMIAN: When you were creating the music for Bright’s Public Information Film in PYLON (S6:E1) “If the Pelican can – then so can you…”, I think you did a bit of singing while chatting to Russ, was there any such humming and warbling as you discussed ideas with him for ‘The Cure for Love’?
MATTHEW: Not really. Russ and I have a perfect collaborative relationship. He sends me the material, and I send him back the finished piece, with a review point somewhere in the middle. Of course, I always have to run everything via production, but they are also excellent to just let Russ and I get on with it. It’s a very no-nonsense approach and doesn’t take up much time. I’m forever in his debt for his trust and belief, even if I think slightly misplaced from time to time! I’m always somewhat worried about what will come next series, which is fun too.
DAMIAN: In contrast to your usual practice of standing in front of and conducting the London Metropolitan Orchestra in a recording studio, was there not the added pressure of the opera actually being filmed and in front of all the extras, the stunning sets and beautiful costumes in the theatre – and also, not least, your cameo?
MATTHEW: Oh yes, but it was enormous fun and has inspired me to do something theatre based at some point. I’m not so sure about being in front of the camera, but I did have a lot of fun on set.
DAMIAN: You’re following in the footsteps of some of the great composers/conductors who’ve cameoed on screen like Bernard Herrmann in The Man Who Knew Too Much or John Barry in The Living Daylights! Whose idea was it for you to make an appearance?
MATTHEW: I think that was Kate Saxon and maybe Russ had a little hand in it. When it was suggested, I thought they must be having a laugh, but seeing as we had live musicians on set, it made sense for me to conduct as I’d written the thing. And it’s pretty cool to be in a show like Endeavour, even for a few seconds.
DAMIAN: Series seven had a unique running theme, and I wondered to what extent this allowed you to focus on developing certain moods or textures as opposed to the aforementioned different score personalities of previous films that haven’t typically shared such a strong and unifying story arc?
MATTHEW: A dream. I was able to reference themes I’d written for the arias and recits in the opera. It was wonderful to create score based themes for Endeavour and Violetta and unfold the drama with the dark characters. The very final sequence where we just used the whole end of the opera was a dream come true. I remember laying it up to picture and thinking Kate’s never going to go with 11 minutes of this, but she was totally behind the idea, and it ended up (more or less) in the final film. We went big for that and increased the orchestra to symphonic size, which was utterly amazing.
DAMIAN: I understand that you composed a lot more music for ‘The Cure for Love’ than appears in the finished film, so I’m wondering if you might ever consider completing the whole opera and perform it one day?
MATTHEW: Oh yes. Russ, Nico, I and the music team are all looking to complete the opera into a 45 minute stage work that local opera groups could perform. This would also be recorded with a modern orchestra and expanded into a hybrid period and modern piece. We’ve had quite some interest in this, so watch this space.
DAMIAN: Russ told me that ‘The Cure for Love’ remains one of the loveliest things he’s been involved with across the show and something very close to his heart. So, my final question is what on earth can you possibly do for an encore?
MATTHEW: It’s one of mine too. I don’t know any other show in the world where we can do these amazing things. It’s truly a gift as a composer and one I never take for granted. I feel our days are growing shorter, so whenever the end be, I think musically it has to have the gravity it deserves to place the final score downbeat on Colin and Russ’ characters. Morse, Lewis, Endeavour, Thursday, Strange, Bright, DeBryn, Joan and hundreds if not thousands of others since 1986. This is a task of responsibility, and I guess, the hardest encore of all.
DAMIAN: Matthew, thanks yet again. It’s always such a treat for a film and television music geek like myself to talk soundtracks with an actual composer – cheers Maestro!
DAMIAN: What images do you have hanging on your office wall to inspire you?
GAVIN: I certainly have a taste for graphic design of the 1950s and ’60s. I have a number of posters and prints from this era – railway and holiday posters on the wall, as well as some product adverts. Along with some artefacts as well, I have an old chocolate vending machine that would have been seen on station platforms, which is my pride and joy.
DAMIAN: How old were you when someone first noticed your talent for art?
GAVIN: Well, I’ve always drawn – growing up, my parents would have said that a pencil and paper would be the easiest way to keep me quiet. I think my first recognition would have been a poster I did for the school library in middle school at about age 10, that won me a book token for my efforts.
DAMIAN: What sort of things did you enjoy drawing as a child and in your teenage years?
GAVIN: All kinds of things really, I enjoyed drawing comic strips. In my teenage years, I was able to experiment with my brother’s home computer to create illustrations digitally for the first time, some quite elaborate images which were created in a basic 4 colour 8-bit style. This early introduction to digital art really helped me grow in confidence using computers and it’s seen me well over the years.
DAMIAN: At what point did you seriously start to consider pursuing a career as an artist?
GAVIN: In my late teens and early 20s I worked in archaeology. Drawing plans and elevations of site features. This was my career for a number of years, but I would often catch myself sketching the landscapes and people in the margins of the plans. So I enrolled at art school and studied graphic design and animation at university in Bristol and never looked back.
DAMIAN: You’ve worked in illustration, print and promotion, animation, as well as live action film and television projects. What was the first piece of graphic design or illustration that you were paid for as a professional?
GAVIN: After graduating from UWE in Bristol, I moved to London looking for work in animation, it was whilst I was there that I had the opportunity to submit drawings as a pitch to be illustrator for Bob the Builder books and magazines. It was this which afforded me the chance to again create art digitally. Over the years I illustrated a number of books for BBC Children’s publishing as well as some for Random House and others as well as illustrations for children’s magazines.
DAMIAN: For a layman such as myself, can you explain what it is you do in film and television and what the difference might be between a graphic artist and graphic designer?
GAVIN: Graphic designers for film and TV, are tasked with creating the print and often digital elements needed for a show. That can range from newspapers, books, magazines, posters, any letters or paperwork needed. It can also be maps, photographs, product packaging, signage and many other requirements including screen graphics. We can also be required to generate paintings and artwork and I’ve created patterned wallpaper and carpets. If I’m being credited as a graphic artist it’s usually because more illustration has been required in the role.
DAMIAN: Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Creature Comforts, Early Man, The Pirates, and Flushed Away; would you say that your skills are particularly well-suited to animation or do you have a strong working relationship with Aardman?
GAVIN: Each project presents its own challenges, working in animation I get to do more illustration and I do get to employ my funny bone. But the role of graphic designer on any show is much the same, it’s the show which sets the style and I approach each project individually. I’ve worked with Aardman for over twenty years now, on many varied projects and I have a talent for humour which is well suited.
DAMIAN: I’m not suggesting it’s necessarily a case of either or but is your priority as a graphic artist to make the objects authentic for the actors to react to as a stimulus on set while filming – including, of course, our plasticine friends – or the audience watching at home who perhaps won’t even appreciate that all the items you mentioned need to be designed and then actually made?
GAVIN: A lot of the graphics the audience shouldn’t give a second thought, the work shouldn’t stand out, it’s part of the immersion of the show. I do hope the actors find the graphics helpful in a scene, many letters and documents which have been created, won’t even be seen by the audience, but if they can help performance in any way, then they have been very successful. Some of the work is for hero props and to be featured prominently, then it’s nice to think that people notice. In animation projects, everything is created from scratch, so I try to make it all funny where I can, if it gets a laugh, when that’s very rewarding.
DAMIAN: Your work for live action television includes such hits as Broadchurch, Poldark and, of course, Endeavour. To what extent do you think that potential clients looking at your portfolio or website ( gavinlines.com ) might be more impressed – and thus obviously more likely to commission you – with the prestigious projects you’ve previously worked on as opposed to the actual merits of the graphics themselves?
GAVIN: A production designer needs to know you can do the work, on time and in budget, work examples and experience shows that you can do that. I think both in equal measure would get the job. I could come up with designs, but without experience on a show, a producer or designer wouldn’t know if you could perform when needed.
DAMIAN: How did you get the job on Endeavour?
GAVIN: Madelaine Leech – production designer – and I have mutual friends and she got in contact through a recommendation. We hit it off straight away and it’s been amazing working with her on a number of shows, she’s a source of constant support and inspiration.
DAMIAN: Can you remember the first piece of graphic design you did on Endeavour and which episode it appeared in?
GAVIN: During the prep period for the series it’s an opportunity to generate graphics for things you know you’ll need. So I will be designing useful items first of all, cigarette packets, bottle labels, even car tax discs are good to get going on. My first real prop design however was Endeavour’s postcard to Thursday, from Venice, in the opening of ORACLE (S7:E1). That was a nice thing to kick off with and I had an opportunity to get Shaun to write the message on it too.
DAMIAN: Obviously both Poldark and Endeavour are set in the past, do you think it is more challenging to work on period as opposed to contemporary productions in terms of the research process?
GAVIN: It can be challenging, but there is a wealth of reference for period shows. That can be from books or internet sources. Also visiting museums and libraries are essential. For contemporary shows, research can be somewhat easier because we are surrounded with reference.
DAMIAN: How much time might you spend on research as opposed to actually designing and then physically creating the objects?
GAVIN: At the start of a show there’s more opportunity for research and to source assets, such as gathering suitable paper stock for a period show. When we’re in the thick of shooting there’s more limited time, but it’s good to be prepared. I still like to spend a couple of hours on research before designing the prop.
DAMIAN: I know from my past interviews with people who have worked on Endeavour – for example, production and costume designers – that they often refer to a particular set of books or magazines in their collection which help with the visual aesthetics associated with the ‘60s or ‘70s. Do you have at least one well-thumbed bible that has proved particularly useful during series 7 and 8?
GAVIN: Robert Opie’s decade based scrapbooks are very useful and have been a constant source of reference over the years. The wealth of examples of products and other graphics in them is invaluable. Also being based in Bristol, I’m blessed with being close to ‘Oakham Treasures’ in Portbury. They have a large and varied collection of historical signs, products and advertising held there which is an incredible resource for a graphic designer. It’s somewhere I go to immerse myself before each job.
DAMIAN: Does your work typically begin with discussions with Russ, the producers and directors or do you receive the script first?
GAVIN: I will receive the script, which is then broken down and any graphics that are required are highlighted, be it hero items or what might be needed for dressing in locations. Sometime after that there’ll be a read through in the company of the director, designer, art directors and other art department members. This is when we get to bring up any queries and get a brief from the director on what they would like to see.
DAMIAN: To what extent do you collaborate with other departments such as production design for example?
GAVIN: Alice, who assists me, and I are part of the art department, so we’ll collaborate with all members of the team. I work closely with Madelaine and defer to her vision. We’ll also have a lot of contact with the script editors and also the legal and clearance departments, it’s a collaborative process and there’s a lot of factors. I also may have to work with the costume department if they require any graphics as part of their process.
DAMIAN: I’ve always wondered when there is a close-up of a newspaper or magazine article and while the audience only sees it for a few seconds and can’t actually read it all, you still have to produce the complete article. Well, how do you know what to actually write and be sure that the text doesn’t contradict the plot of not only that episode but also possibly past or future storylines?
GAVIN: Here again I’ll work closely with Charlotte and Uju, the script editors, from who I’ll request the copy for the articles in the newspapers. They work with Russ to make sure that any dates and details on graphic props line up with the story and timeline.
DAMIAN: Do you ever slip in names of people only you or other members of the cast and crew would know into such articles or props
GAVIN: I personally don’t tend to do that but that’s certainly happened, names on noticeboards and on forms for example. There is a procedure to follow with using names on the graphics. Everything will have to be checked with the compliance guidelines and there may be issues with names matching real people. So anything created will have to go through the clearance process.
DAMIAN: You mentioned Shaun’s handwriting on the postcard from Venice earlier but who usually writes all the signatures for Endeavour or Thursday on props such as letters or police files?
GAVIN: For recurring characters such as the heroes, we’ll get the actors to sign forms or any handwriting needed, that keeps a consistency through the shows. If the documents are from side characters and they aren’t portrayed as signing them, then it’s easier to do that ourselves.
DAMIAN: It’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it I suppose, was it particularly challenging researching the covers you designed for magazines such as ‘Rowdy Girls’ (ORACLE) and ‘Wild Erotica’ (RAGA)?
GAVIN: Ha, a tough challenge for sure. There’s plenty of reference out there of course, online etc. For ‘Rowdy Girls’ I did pick up a vintage copy of ‘Parade’ for reference into the size and paper stock to create an authentic prop. As with most things there will be a clearance process for the graphics – making sure the magazine names don’t infringe on any copyright for example – and of course the images must comply with Ofcom broadcast regulations regarding the watershed. Stock image sites are useful for getting period images to use. There’s a limit to what’s available and sometimes you can recognise images on other show’s graphics, that I’ve also used myself.
DAMIAN: One of the supporting cover lines on ‘Wild Erotica’ reads “Kinky Diaries of Wayward Ladies”, I’m wondering who came up with this because “wayward” sounds like a word Russ would use?
GAVIN: That would have been me in that particular case. Russ often adds lines like that in the script description, but he is immensely busy and we don’t want to bother him all the time for such things. I’m sure he would have thought of many more of them though.
DAMIAN: Well I’m sure Morse, particularly his older incarnation would approve. Anyway, tell me about the creation of ‘The Cure for Love’ opera poster and programme, did you look at old artwork from Venice or just the period more generally associated with baroque?
GAVIN: I looked at contemporary opera posters and ephemera for research, having the plot of the opera helped with creating the imagery. The poster image was created digitally, it’s much quicker for me to work in this way, there wasn’t a lot of time to generate the dressing graphics for the opera house and consideration into how detailed it would be seen is a factor when deciding how much time to dedicate on them.
DAMIAN: I know Russ is something of a horror connoisseur, The Wolf’s Head pub sign must be inspired by The Slaughtered Lamb from An American Werewolf in London?
GAVIN: Of course, it was described in detail in the script, so I used the original film’s sign as a start point. Again, I initially illustrated it digitally, this time it was printed full size, mounted onto a board and overpainted for the final piece.
DAMIAN: Tell me about some of the other wolf and horror imagery such as the Jenny paintings, was there a particular mood board that you and the director, Kate Saxon, were working from?
GAVIN: Kate is very visual and had a detailed brief for what she wanted to see. I did a series of illustrations as suggestions for Jenny’s wolf painting, from which she chose preferred options and gave notes, this was then handed over to Ida in the art department who took it on and created the artwork for the set.
DAMIAN: And what about the beautiful Colin Dexter portrait featured in ZENANA?
GAVIN: Creating portraits is something I always relish doing, so when there was a suggestion for a Colin portrait I was happy to jump at the chance. It was again created digitally and this time printed onto canvas and varnished for the frame.
DAMIAN: What’s the most challenging graphic you created for the latest series of Endeavour?
GAVIN: Maps are always challenging and time consuming, especially if they are referring to fictional places. Oxford maps have to be elaborated on and often manipulated to include the scripted details. Another challenge are the newspapers, there are a number of editions of the ‘Oxford Mail’ in each film and all the information we are given is for the hero articles only, but each paper needs to have a complete front and rear cover created, so that’s a lot of additional copy and images to place in the layout, along with period advertising to put on there also, to have them look authentic. This all has to be checked and cleared with compliance so there aren’t any issues with copyright or existing people.
DAMIAN: I’ve actually seen where they keep all the old props from previous episodes and I remember thinking “this belongs in a museum” as Indiana Jones might say. I know you would never do this – and, of course, neither did I – but if you could take just one item home with you when no one was looking, what would it be?
GAVIN: Can I have one of the cars? Definitely the cars, I’d take a car… hypothetically of course…
DAMIAN: You take the car and I’ll take the Calloway LP. Gavin, thank you very much indeed.
GAVIN: Thank you Damian, it’s been a pleasure.
~
More information and images from Gavin Lines can be found on his website: gavinlines.com
DAMIAN: I know it’s something to do with Indian music but why did you specifically choose to title this film RAGA?
RUSS: We always try to include a musical title across the run. And, given the Indian flavour of the story, RAGA – a central feature of Indian classical music – felt fitting.
DAMIAN: And was naming the Indian restaurant “The Jolly Rajah” simply a play on Jolly Roger, or more in reference to the great Mr Allam?
RUSS: A play on Jolly Roger, obviously — but also nodding to The British Raj. It was originally called something else — but it’ll keep.
Graphic design by Gavin Lines
DAMIAN: RAGA opens with the The Jolly Rajah cinema advert which I thought was very evocative of the sort of crap adverts I remember watching before a film started during the 70s, 80s and even 90s – they never seemed to evolve very much did they?
RUSS: I’m of an age where I look back on them with huge fondness and find them immensely comforting. The reason they never evolved may have been economic, but there was something about their made for tuppence sensibility and ‘just five minutes from this cinema’ that’s incredibly endearing. I rather liked that world from which they came. And it should be remembered that it wasn’t just Indian restaurant ads that looked like this. Pretty much all ‘local business’ ads had something of this flavour.
DAMIAN: Were you one of the boys who purchased refreshments during the adverts and trailers or – like my family who were always on a tight budget in those days – from Woolworths beforehand?
RUSS: Do you mean from the usherette? I went to the pictures rarely as a kid with the family. But I think selections were made for the most part from the ‘concessions’ counter before going into the cinema itself. If I remember correctly. Sometimes from the usherette. We covered a fair bit of this in CARTOUCHE (S5:E2).
DAMIAN: Again, very evocative, the wrestling scenes reminded me of Saturday afternoons round my great grandparents. My mum had me when she was very young so I was lucky enough to know them and my great nan, Gladys – who was a small, frail and ever so gently spoken old lady – absolutely adored watching big sweaty men jump all over each other in colourful leotards. In my day it was Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, who do you remember?
RUSS: It was the closest thing we had to a religion in our house. How long have you got? Les Kellett; Kendo Nagasaki; Adrian Street, and Bobby Barnes (as glam tag team Hell’s Angels); Jackie Pallo; Mick McManus – (legend has it that Pallo and McManus used to knock about with one or two family members back in the mists of time – but who knows? – nobody left alive to ask now) – the Royal Brothers – Bert Royal and Vic Faulkner; Honey Boy Zimba; Johnny Kwango.
Graphic design by Gavin Lines
Likewise — my diminutive Northern grandmother was a vocal devotee of the grapple game. I’ve half a mind we went along to the Town Hall once to watch it. We certainly went along to the Bingo often enough. My principal recollection of the latter is cigarette smoke. A large, windowless room filled with two-hundred or more women — pretty much all of whom were smoking for Britain. Literally, eye watering. Cinemas, of course — had that same tobacco smoke haze. My one regret about the Wrestling sequence is that we lost a bit of the great Ted Robbins for reasons of length.
DAMIAN: Incidentally, my great grandad, Joe, lost an eye in the war and would only wear his glass eye on special occasions like a wedding or suchlike. So, for the rest of time, he kept it in a cup of water on the sink next to the toilet and I always had the creepy sensation that I was being watched when I went to the bathroom. Anyway, speaking of families, the Allams have invaded and taken everyone’s job as one of the more unsavoury characters in RAGA might phrase it. In addition to Roger, we not only have his wife, Rebecca Saire returning in her role from COLOURS (S5:E4), but also their son, William, as Gary Rogers/Radowicz. You told me last time that you had nothing to do with casting Abigail Thaw’s daughter in ORACLE (S7:E1) so presumably this wasn’t your idea either?
RUSS: Um… Kind of yes and no. I thought as a story it would be great to see Mrs.Radowicz again. It felt like it connected with her earlier story. To follow that to its conclusion. And all else followed.
DAMIAN: Do you think you would have written any dialogue slightly differently as a nod to acknowledge their relationships – perhaps similar to the way you did with Abigail Thaw and her father in FIRST BUS TO WOODSTOCK – if you had known in advance of writing the script that Roger would be joined by his wife and son?
RUSS: No. The material for Abi was intentionally slightly knowing – as it was conceived as a one off. But a much straighter bat was played with Rebecca and William.
DAMIAN: I noticed on Britbox that they call the first episode of Endeavour, OVERTURE, and not FIRST BUS TO WOODSTOCK as we’ve always referred to it. What’s the official title then?
RUSS: OVERTURE — in the end it was felt we should keep to the one word title that’s become part of our world.
DAMIAN: Not for the first time, Endeavour explores the issue of racism. Is this purely because of what was happening in real life during the period or is it a subject that you feel compelled to return to or perhaps have personally witnessed?
RUSS: We were led by the history. The election of 1970 with its National Front candidates — and there was a big protest march against the proposed Immigration Act which was passed the following year. The purpose of the Immigration Act was – you won’t be surprised to find – to control — i.e., limit – immigration from Commonwealth countries which was perceived to be on too great a scale. It was a matter of national interest at the time – so we covered it, and it was all of a piece with the restaurant.
DAMIAN: Were there gangs that you remember from your own youth?
RUSS: No. Not particularly. South London where I grew up – there may have been that in the generation above us – but black and white kids played together and just got on with life. It was a very mixed demographic. Fewer Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi families — but lots of Afro-Caribbean and biracial families. The pub over the way… the clientele there was pretty much exclusively white, but on the street the kids just all mixed in together and got on with being kids.
DAMIAN: Away from these interviews, I’ve told you before that my first girlfriend was black and I don’t remember it ever being an issue with either our families or fellow pupils at school. Quite rightly, no one congratulated us on how “right on” or progressive we were and nor did anyone make any negative comments to us either. The point is that no one commented full stop because, as I’ve said, it wasn’t an issue. We went to the cinema together a few times – I might add that I always splashed out on such occasions and never got a Woolworths pic ‘n’ mix beforehand – and one time she brought along a friend who was accompanied by her boyfriend, both of whom were also black. Again, I honestly don’t think the fact that I was the only white person in the group ever occurred to any of us and we all went about our business quite innocently and oblivious to what anyone might or might not think. And yet, rather sadly, with the undoubtedly well-intentioned but constant contemporary focus on the subject of racism in film, television, journalism and perhaps most especially on social media, I really do suspect that I would be very conscious of the fact if I was dating a black girl today. How is this progress? Anyway, I suppose my question to you is do you think that there’s a danger of either preaching to the choir or alienating sections of the audience whenever you explore these sort of subjects because your political jibes – particularly in this film at the expense of the Conservatives, Brexit and UKIP – are not very subtle are they?
RUSS: Again — it’s the history and its cyclical nature that throws these things up. Half a century on, immigration was again the issue of the day. If you’re dealing with a story from 1970 that covers the same preoccupations that have come around again, then comparisons are unavoidable. In 1970 it’s the NF – fascist and neo-Nazi bootboys – who’re leading the charge against immigration, and across the last thirty years or so it’s been another NF. You’re not seriously going to expect us to depict the National Front in a warm and cuddly light, are you? But it was the family story at the restaurant which is where we began. It was originally conceived as a kind of King Lear story set around an Indian restaurant — but that was almost too much to fit in to the two hour traffic of our stage. A cast of if not thousands then a dozen or so — and guest parts are at a premium. I’m limited to about ten or twelve in total — and when you’ve got a weave going — several stories interlaced, you need to people them — so the numbers at the restaurant came down.
DAMIAN: I thought the scene in the morgue where Mrs Radowicz identifies her son’s body was beautifully performed and intensely moving in illustrating how racism and violence not only affects the victim and perpetrator but also their families and the wider community. Was it important for you to provide some sort of balance in showing the violence from both sides when Gary is stabbed by a group of young Asian men?
RUSS: It was a way to illustrate the tragic and utter pointlessness of hatred. In this instance, hatred that takes ‘difference’ as its cause. You’ll remember Ray Winstone’s fate in Quadrophenia (1979). So — there it was mods and rockers. But the Montagues and Capulets are there too.
DAMIAN: Let’s return to happier questions. We might expect Max to wear a pinny – for both cooking and cutting – but what a wonderful treat it was to see Strange in his kitchen wearing one whilst trying to learn how to cook! I had hoped that this might be a prelude to a later scene with him preparing a meal for a special young lady but sadly this proved not to be the case so what suddenly motivated him to put down the trombone and learn to cook instead?
RUSS: I think we were just playing around with the notion of food. And Strange – in Riggers’ hands – is a wonderful everyman. Most of us – men at least – would probably like to be Endeavour or Thursday, but in truth we’re probably a lot closer to Strange.
Graphic design by Gavin Lines
DAMIAN: Thanks to our last Q&A, I can’t help but hear Henry Mancini whenever Violetta appears but anyway, there’s a wonderful scene between her and Endeavour…
ENDEAVOUR: Venice was Venice. You stepped out of your life for a minute and you found yourself in mine. And it was wonderful. But it wasn’t real.
VIOLETTA: It was for me.
She moves in to kiss him but he turns away.
VIOLETTA (CONT’D): Tell me you don’t want me.
ENDEAVOUR: I don’t want you.
VIOLETTA: Tell me again.
ENDEAVOUR: I can’t save you.
VIOLETTA: Then no one can.
…You obviously know and the audience knows that having failed to save his mother, Endeavour tries to save everyone else – particularly women – but was he also aware of this when he said the line, ‘I can’t save you’?
RUSS: No. Very much not. I don’t think he understood the weight of it. He couldn’t save her from a bad marriage.
DAMIAN: Then what exactly did he mean and – as a very clever and perceptive detective – does Endeavour have any self awareness or clue regarding the reason why his relationships with women such as Susan, Claudine and Joan keep ending so dismally?
RUSS: Susan was too early. Claudine was never going the distance. Joan… He imagines declaring his feelings for Joan would be in some way being disloyal, and in some respect betraying the trust Thursday and by extension the family have placed in him.
DAMIAN: Not that he would, of course, but if Endeavour sought relationship advice from one of his friends, who might provide the most incisive observations about his shortcomings as a boyfriend?
RUSS: You see — I don’t think he has shortcomings as a boyfriend particularly. I think I’ve mentioned before his tendency to go all in and hold nothing back. If anything he’s too honest. When he falls, he falls hard. ‘When somebody loves you, it’s no good unless he loves you… All the way.’ Isn’t that the sentiment that’s supposed to prevail? Not some wishy-washy half-measure where you don’t declare your hand. ‘Vide cor meum’. Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that the ideal? Something real. ‘Give me some truth.’
DAMIAN: Why does Ludo say that Violetta hates the opera?
RUSS: It demonstrates how little he knows her — or how little he wants Endeavour to think he knows her…
DAMIAN: Ludo references Robert Danvers. Have you – some might add finally – moved on from Tony Hancock to Peter Sellers references now because not all of your wee nodettes are necessarily always in keeping with the period?
RUSS: There’s A Girl in My Soup (1970) is such a charming confection — and has owned my heart since I first saw it many, many years ago. Impossible to say with any degree of certainty — but Danvers feels pretty close to Sellers, or as close as we’re ever going to get on film. And he’s a food critic and restaurant reviewer — so it had to go in. I think we may have nodded to him before as one of the judges for the beauty contest… many years ago. And, of course, Ms.Hawn is just beguiling. The ‘seduction’ scene – which is a fabulously long two-hander sequence – is magic. Goldie Hawn proves more than a match for Sellers, who is only in his early 40s here – and posing as a somewhat moth-eaten and dog-eared Lothario. But as a piece there’s a wonderful evocation of the generation gap. Pre and post war sensibilities.
Wonderful Nicky Henson. John Comer – who had been one of Sellers’ droogies in I’m Alright Jack (1959), and with whom I got to work about ten years later. Gabrielle Drake – for all the Fandersons out there. Diana Dors! Tony Britton being just pitch perfect as always. And, of course, Nicola Pagett who lit up every frame – and sadly went ahead this year. She really was very special. Her performance in Privates on Parade (1982) — there you are, written by the great Peter Nichols – back to Morse again! — is a gem.
Oh – and Mike D’Abo’s ‘Miss Me in the Morning’ is a stone cold classic.
DAMIAN: Why is Endeavour doing his own decorating, is it because he wants to or that he can’t afford a decorator?
RUSS: It’s a class thing – isn’t it? Thursday you’ll recall decorating his own place. And it’s an extension of that. ‘Get a man in?’ Fatal to generalise, but one extrapolates much from one’s own circumstances – and ‘decorating’ for those of my socio-economic background, and I appreciate we were quite an idiosyncratic set-up, was always seen as the job of the ‘man of the house’ — else ‘the woman of the house.’ Getting decorators in was something perceived by us as something the middle-classes – encompassing the LMC – did. And of course — his legendary parsimony may have something to do with it.
DAMIAN: Endeavour is smoking again but we’d better not repeat our previous debates about this. However, Thursday is back on his pipe – I thought you told me something about him considering it old hat in the new decade?
RUSS: Smoking for Endeavour is very much Shaun’s input. Thursday’s return to the briar is where he’s happiest. The aberration was brought about by trying to fit with Box and Jago’s new beat, Daddio!
DAMIAN: The following scene between Mr and Mrs Bright after the faith healer left their home confused me a little:
MRS BRIGHT: He’s very handsome, don’t you think?
BRIGHT: Oh, yes. Very handsome, I’m sure.
MRS BRIGHT: Are you jealous, Puli?
BRIGHT: Desperately.
They then both smile at each other like it’s a joke, what’s going on here?
RUSS: I think – if I remember – she’s talking about Ludo, isn’t she? Teasing Bright. But given their unhappy history where ‘other men’ are concerned it’s a bit reckless. Bright – knowing how ill she is – goes along with it.
DAMIAN: Bright mentions that he visited Pankot during his time in India. Sounds thrillingly exciting, you might want to add this to the list of places you intend to visit by train one day?
RUSS: Only if there’s a ride on a mine-cart involved! But no heart extraction, thank you!
DAMIAN: There’s an important scene in the Indian restaurant where two of the brothers are talking about their understanding of where home is and their sense of identity and belonging. Given some of your background that we’ve discussed in this and our previous interviews, it struck me that the home and community in which you were raised is obviously vastly different from your current situation and I couldn’t help but wonder with which of these you feel most closely identified; do you feel more of a true sense of belonging to the world of Little Russ or Big Russ?
RUSS: Material circumstances may change, but I don’t think one’s values do. You can take the boy out of Battersea, &c.
DAMIAN: Anything you can tell us about the second film of the new series, SCHERZO?
RUSS: Um… Not much. It’s directed in fine style by Ian Aryeh. We touch a bit on Endeavour’s family life. And Thursday has an away-day. It’s a bit of a celebration of a particular sub-strand of British film-making which was started by a book that arrived in 1971 and went on to become a series of books – so we felt justified in including it. The films came a few years later — but it’s a world I’ve always thought worth exploring, and with the window of opportunity closing on how many more worlds one’s going to get to look at… it felt like now or never.
We left Morse, Thursday and the rest of Oxford’s finest back in 1970. The world has obviously seen many changes in the intervening decades. And yet, the world has perhaps become even more different from the one in which the last episode of Endeavour was broadcast in February 2020.
So, given the uncertain times in which we now live, we may well find ourselves taking comfort from the past as we share a cup of kindness and remember old friends.
Graphic artwork by Gavin Lines
DAMIAN: Russ, how’s your memory?
RUSS: Unreliable.
DAMIAN: Well, as always, we’ll discuss the previous series – specifically ORACLE (S7:E1) in this first part of the interview – before offering a brief preview of the new one. So, let’s remind ourselves of how the seventh series began: It’s New Year’s Eve; Endeavour meets a mysterious and alluring brunette at a Venice opera house, while back at Oxford, Mr and Mrs Thursday leave a working men’s club in favour of seeing in the new year at home in front of the television from which the singing of “Auld Lang Syne” can be heard, and elsewhere, a woman is brutally murdered on a canal towpath. Russ, I don’t know if it’s opera, working men’s clubs, a quiet night at home in front of the TV, or maybe even a midnight stroll alongside a moonlit canal, but how do you usually like to celebrate New Year’s Eve?
RUSS: Quietly to the point of not at all. Early night, ideally. It’s funny, isn’t it, the things you remember. The mysteries of the world. I remember thinking when I first heard about them that ‘resolutions’ were some sort of quasi-religious thing. Probably because we were a godless bunch of heathens in our house, and with New Year falling so close upon Christmas the child’s mind somehow conflates the two as both somehow having something to do with the baby Jebus. I imagined, I think, for some years that there might be a bolt of lightning which would smite one, or demons would drag one off to the fiery basement if one broke one’s resolutions, which all seemed to involve abstention or self-denial of one form or another. The question usually being ‘What are you giving up for New Year?’ — Like some Pagan Lent. As a small kid what are you going to give up? Booze? Fags? Matchbox cars?
I always knew the jig was up though when Andy Stewart rolled around. That was it. There wouldn’t be anything worth watching after that. The ‘Big Film’ was done by ten-ish. Then it was kilts and accordions until first footing and stories of taking lumps of coal around to people’s houses ‘for luck.’ Absolute madness.
There’s an enforced ‘New start’ thing about it all that I find deeply resistable. The slate wiped clean. A second chance. Absolution and redemption arising from what exactly? It’s not a solstice or an equinox – which I can understand as a marker for something — but just an arbitrary date.
DAMIAN: [Note to self, never invite Russ to a New Year’s Eve party] I think it was SWAY (S2:E3) that you originally hoped to set at Christmas but your plans were thwarted, is ORACLE and the scenes in ZENANA (S7:E3) therefore the closest we’re likely to get to seeing a proper Endeavour festive episode?
RUSS: ICARUS (S5:E6) was also originally set at Christmas or in the run up to it.
DAMIAN: Back in the good old days of the first few series at least – the age of innocence, Eden before the fall and all that when Endeavour and Thursday were still chums and would go to the pub together and discuss sandwiches – would Thursday have invited Endeavour to Christmas dinner?
RUSS: I could swear I’ve written a scene where Win invited Endeavour to Christmas lunch.
DAMIAN: And would the Thursday family have turkey for Christmas dinner and, if so, might Win use the leftovers for sandwiches and disrupt the well-established cycle?
RUSS: Of course they’d have turkey. They’re not the Cratchits.
DAMIAN: Of course, we STILL don’t know what Thursday has for lunch on a Wednesday! Haven’t you created a problem for yourself here because the fans will be greatly disappointed if they never find out, and yet, the revelation is surely doomed to be anticlimactic after such a wait unless it’s something surprising or shocking like ortolan?
RUSS: Wasn’t it ortolan that formed the central delicacy in Mitterand’s last meal before he died. Some say of shame — as the joke has it. The only time you’d ever be likely to see Thursday bent over a bowl with a towel over his head would be when he was self medicating ‘a chest’ with Vicks in boiling water!
DAMIAN: What came first, the idea to begin series seven on New Year’s Eve or in Venice?
RUSS: New Year’s Eve — definitely. New decade.
DAMIAN: Have you ever visited Venice?
RUSS: Only on celluloid. When there’s a break I mean to go by train.
DAMIAN: But you’ve visited Dorset?
RUSS: Mmm. Um — well, I’d thought it might be interesting and rewarding to shadow the events of the opera with our unfolding story for Endeavour — so that’s where it started. The doomed lovers. The jealous “husband”. Lots of ‘misunderstandings’ in opera — but we could only really feather it in — we couldn’t present a whole opera, so we just created key scenes and arias. I say we — I did the English libretto, which Nicolo translated into ‘old Italian’, saving my ignorant blushes in so many ways, and Matt just knocked it out of the park, as he always does, with his incredible setting. We agreed beforehand on the period — so he had this mad challenge of writing something credibly baroque. He wrote so much music. Half an hour or thereabouts — just for those few opera moments onscreen. But if a thing’s worth doing… There’s a possibility that he and Nico might complete the thing and present it in concert in Italy – which would be incredible.
DAMIAN: How did you decide on the name, Violetta Talenti?
RUSS: Talenti came late — out of necessity and what would clear Compliance. But she was always Violetta. Doomed heroine. La Traviata.
DAMIAN: I know from our previous interviews that you’ll often find inspiration from the characters you saw in films as a kid such as the influence of Joyce Grenfell in the first three of the St. Trinian’s series (1954 – 60), Shirley Eaton in various roles including Carry On Nurse (1959) and Sue Lloyd in The Ipcress File (1965) which all contributed to the creation of Trewlove. How did Violetta look in your mind’s eye as you created the character and was there a particular image – or vision! – that inspired you?
RUSS: Well, I’d be lying if I said La Cardinale wasn’t in there somewhere. As the Princess in The Pink Panther, perhaps. A hint of Domino Vitale, I guess.
Publicity photo of Stephanie Leonidas (Violetta Talenti)Claudia Cardinale in The Pink Panther (1963)Claudine Auger who played Domino in Thunderball (1965)
DAMIAN: I’ve asked you similar questions before regarding some of the main male characters and you told me it’s difficult to describe a process that is so instinctive and done without analysis – something of a dissociated mental state where the dark passenger slips behind the wheel – but I still can’t help but wonder what Violetta’s voice sounded like in your mind’s ear as you typed her dialogue?
RUSS: Ever soft and low. I sort of had a joke in my head that she might sound like Dickie Greenleaf’s lover in much missed Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mister Ripley — ‘Deeeeeki. Deeeeeki Greenleaf.’ Crossed with Appolonia Vitelli – Michael Corleone’s Sicilian wife… [in The Godfather] the scene with the car where she’s showing her fluency in English by practising the days of the week, ‘Maaandi, Chewsdi, Wehnsdi…’ &c. But in all seriousness – I was hoping for something… cosmopolitan.
DAMIAN: Given the possible echoes of Jack the Ripper, Hammer Horror and the Gothic genre more generally in this episode, I thought it was interesting that Stephanie Leonidas – who played Violetta – also appeared in Whitechapel (2009-13) and Dracula (2006). Anyway, I thought she did a marvellous job and had that inherent vamp or femme fatale quality about her.
RUSS: Yes — again, she had to make a big impression with relatively little screen time — so every moment had to count.
DAMIAN: I suppose you already had at least an impression of some of the voices of the female actors such as Abigail Thaw before you created their characters in Endeavour but I wonder if you now hear the voice of someone like Sara Vickers as you write dialogue for Joan or the sound you originally envisioned before that part was cast?
RUSS: Yes, absolutely. I now see/hear all the regular characters as those who give them such vivid life. But I guess it was the speech pattern for each of them that came first, and has been refined the more I’ve written them.
DAMIAN: Do you think that you would have still run with the Violetta character and storyline if Joan hadn’t been away on “secondment”?
RUSS: That’s a great question. Any change as great as being robbed of Sara V., is going to have a massive effect on the story we tell. So many choices that we’re obliged to make are as a result of things which are nothing to do with the story — location goes down, or has to change, or something’s simply beyond our budget to realise as well as we’d like, but artiste availability is without doubt a huge influence. And it’s got tougher with each series. Serves us right for having such a fantastic cast. But yes — one has to ‘write around’ absences. You might just have an actor for three days across two films — and those three days might have to be together. So you find a way that one or two of those three days fall at the end of the schedule for one film, and bring forward a one or two from the following film’s schedule to roll over after the end of the previous film — a time when crew are typically catching their breath. We’ve just done so on this series. But it’s all a juggling act for every department at every level. It’s possible that it would have been a very different series if Sara V., had been available.
DAMIAN: You’ve told me on more than one occasion that you’re deeply invested in Joan’s journey and so I was wondering if you have attempted to compensate for her absence last time and tried to put whatever character development and storylines you had originally planned for both ‘70 and ‘71 into the new series?
RUSS: I don’t know about compensate. I love writing for Sara. Loved what she did with Joan right from the off. She’s a fantastically sensitive and thoughtful actor. Everything you care about with Joan, you care about because of Sara. Her extraordinary skill and talent. She has to do and convey so much with great economy. But, yes — I am deeply invested in Joan’s character and story. I’ve loved what we’ve been able to do with her. It feels like she’s been on a long and often painful journey of self-discovery.
DAMIAN: Both in terms of the characters and the actors who play them, Sara Vickers and Stephanie Leonidas could hardly be more different. In many ways, Violetta is obviously typical of someone that Endeavour finds himself attracted to – frequently vulnerable, dangerous or doomed and almost always unobtainable – and while Joan is often vulnerable too, she’s also inherently good, kind and someone who could offer Endeavour comfort and stability. So in terms of the characters he’s attracted to, I don’t know whether this makes any sense at all or if it makes absolute perfect sense?
RUSS: Emotionally, at least, he is drawn to self-destruction. He’s a romantic, for whom love has to be indistinguishable from suffering. Small wonder given his personal history. Arrested development. He is forever reaching for the perfect/idealised woman — because the woman he idealised escaped him when he was twelve. So – one might argue, he sets his heart upon the unattainable, because there is comfort in the predictability of disappointment.
DAMIAN: I obviously understand that he’s had a belly full of blood and guts but was Thursday buying a couple of canaries a metaphor for both his children having flown the nest as he tells Win they are a pair – a cock and a hen – and says, ‘we might get some chicks.’?
RUSS: Write what you know. It was from life. For some years as a kid, I shared an attic with my old man’s canaries. Early risers.
DAMIAN: Win is not very happy about the birds and asks him where they are going to be kept to which Thursday replies, ‘Up my arse, Winifred. That’s where we’re gonna keep them. Up my arse. Like David Nixon.’ I laughed when I first watched this scene but then almost immediately felt guilty when I saw the reaction shot of Win looking hurt. However, when I rewatched it, I laughed again and thought she was a bit of an old nag for moaning about the mess of feathers and suchlike but I’m still divided about it. Whose side are you on?
RUSS: I can see both sides. Which is probably how we got into this mess.
DAMIAN: With Jack Bannon spending most of his time in Gotham City just lately, how likely is it that we’ll ever see Sam Thursday again?
RUSS: Jack’s #TeamEndeavour always.
DAMIAN: I remember magicians like Tommy Cooper and Paul Daniels but I had to google David Nixon, is he someone you remember hiding birds in astonishing places during your own childhood?
RUSS: He was a regular Light Entertainment fixture. Often ‘assisted’ by Anita Harris, if memory serves. As a kid he’d tip up on variety shows — and then had his own series on Thames that went out sort of midweek around 5.15. I didn’t have the patience for the show as a boy. Probably because it betokened the end of kids TV and the news on next, before the wretched Today. I’ve always found that post-news, magazine programme slot depressing beyond tablets.
David Nixon and Anita Harris
DAMIAN: As always, there’s a plethora of other cultural references or nods – I think you call them wee nodettes – but I fear it would be very tedious for you to confirm or deny every single one of them so I’m just going to ask about a few of my favourite possibilities. Was the whistling suspect a reference to Peter Lorre’s serial killer character, Hans Beckert, in Fritz Lang’s M (1931)?
RUSS: As much ‘Molly Malone’ from The Premature Burial – to be honest.
DAMIAN: You use the words ‘my kind of girl’ or something very similar and Doctor Blish uses a tie in a strangulation attempt. In addition to most Hitchcock films, I’m crazy about Frenzy (1972) which features Barry Foster as Bob Rusk who says ‘you’re my type of woman’ or ‘girl’ throughout the film before strangling them with his tie so I was wondering if this was another wee nodette?
RUSS: Yes, Frenzy’s hard to ignore at the top of the 70s, isn’t it? I think one has to set Frenzy in the aspic of its times, and contextualise it through Hitchcock’s… particular interests. There’s much I like about it — and much I find ugly and repellent. There are moments of great discomfort for the viewer, I think. The older I get, the harder I find some of it to watch. I love the travelogue of it. My very dear friend Paul Tropea, with whom I first started writing, worked on it as a kid — I think, the discovery of the body floating in the Thames — and saw Mr Hitchcock. So… Six Degrees of Separation.
DAMIAN: From the opening montage featuring a barmaid pursued by a menacing unseen presence along the canal, the inserts of a full moon, rats, cats and ravens, to the final shot of a Jack the Ripper-esque figure brandishing a cane-sword and fleeing the scene of the murder with his cloak – or at least longcoat – flapping in the wind, wasn’t ORACLE a little more Gothic than we’ve seen in Oxford for a while?
RUSS: Yes. I was reaching a bit for that rather odd vibe of Dracula A.D.1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula – when Hammer brought the Count into the modern age with varying degrees of success. I do like those films, but perhaps more for their 70s’ aesthetic than anything else. Scream and Scream Again and the AIP Count Yorga pictures were also in the mix. Which is probably a bit at odds with the gothic you’re referring to. We were very consciously referencing the predatory framing, subjective angle of that ‘damsel in distress’/’next victim’ thing in the Hammers. Not quite pastiche — but we were trying to utilise the same visual grammar. Because the whole Towpath Killer story was an extension of that possibly unintended message by the film makers. The threat – euphemistically portrayed as vampirism – is, of course, implicitly sexual. Attractive young woman on lonely towpath… It felt very much of its, ‘well, she’s only got herself to blame’ time. Do you know what I mean? An overt distillation of a lot of things the Women’s Conference was pushing back against. The Patriarchy, innit?
DAMIAN: Indeed, the only thing missing was Michael Ripper as the landlord…
RUSS: Yes, indeed. He’s been a constant reference point across the years.
DAMIAN: And finally with reference to Rippers, aspects of the plot obviously reminded me of the Victorian spiritualist and medium, Robert James Lees, who was alleged to have psychically identified Jack the Ripper. I wonder if you believe in the possibility of such mystic powers and paranormal phenomena?
RUSS: Ah, Robert James Lees. Played by Donald Sutherland in a great favourite of mine – Murder By Decree (1979) – which has just been issued on Blu-Ray – featuring the late, great Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason at Watson — as they go after Jack the Ripper. It’s heavily influenced by Stephen Knight’s The Final Solution – which has now been much discredited. Alan Moore’s From Hell leans into that particular scenario quite heavily too, if I remember correctly.
RUSS: I won’t be telling a scholar of Ripper Street and all pertaining to it such as yourself anything, but recently we have had two terrific pieces of work that look at the events of 1888 in a new light — Hallie Rubenhold’s truly wonderful Five Women and Bruce Robinson’s spectacular They All Love Jack. Each book is fuelled by a righteous anger, and neither ever loses sight of the human tragedy at the heart of what has grown over the past hundred and forty years into ‘an industry’.
I suppose movies such as Murder By Decree fall into that ‘industry’ — but like those two books, there’s an anger and a humanity about Holmes – a fury at what has been done to the women in the story – that burns up the screen.
So — Lees. Dramatically, I think psychics and mediums are very useful characters to have at one’s disposal. Do I believe it? ‘Today will be a Sunday for most Virgos.’
DAMIAN: And we have Mrs Bright who is hoping that faith healers will help with her cancer which later leads to a beautifully understated scene between Mr Bright and Thursday where they have a brief philosophical discussion about faith and although both seem sceptical, neither obviously says so. In terms of dealing with difficult problems and situations which are beyond their control, would you say there might be a parallel between Mrs Bright turning to faith healing and Thursday buying a pair of canaries?
RUSS: I had a lot of experience of faith healers visiting the house for the ‘laying on of hands’ when I was very small. For a while it felt like they were always there. I found them sinister. A bunch of strange men — and they were always exclusively men — visiting. So – no, not for me. Mrs Bright..? Well — one would imagine pain, fear and desperation might lead any of us to reach for deliverance. By whatever means. No atheists in the foxhole.
I think Thursday understands that. And he’s open minded enough to imagine that – for all his reservations – there may be ‘more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy…’ He can also see that Bright is clinging to hope — and Thursday would be the last person to take that from a soul.
The canaries… He was reaching for beauty and innocence. A simpler time. His version, I suppose, of Max’s ‘something has to be lovely’.
DAMIAN: Well let’s turn to the subject of feminism. Was this something you were really keen to explore at this particular stage of the series – 1970 – or was it the coincidental fact that a National Women’s Liberation Conference really did take place at Oxford’s Ruskin College in the same year or the even happier coincidence that one of the organisers of this event, Sally Alexander, was actually John Thaw’s first wife and the mother of Abigail Thaw?
RUSS: Yes, it was. It was kind of key to all we were doing, really. On the one hand you’ve got this wicked individual on the towpath doing what he’s doing — and on the other you’ve got women organising. Sisters very much doing it for themselves.
DAMIAN: Did you come up with the idea of having Abigail’s daughter, Molly-Mae Whitmey, cameo as her own grandmother?
RUSS: It certainly wouldn’t have been me who broached it — I’m far too shy. Fools rush in. &c., and I’m terribly aware of rifling through people’s lives and memories. I probably felt I was already pushing my luck in touching on it at all, but when one’s dealing with those whose loved ones literally created history and you want to cover that history because it’s hugely important… I see no ships. But everyone was delightful and enthusiastic about the conceit, and I was delighted we got to do it.
DAMIAN: Do you think John would have chuckled at this?
RUSS: Possibly. But we’d probably be missing the point of that first Women’s Conference by several country miles if we wondered too loudly about John’s reaction to what we’ve done.
DAMIAN: I thought it was a very lovely touch. Anyway, I think the only thing that I wasn’t sure about in this film was when Endeavour gives away his rare test pressing of the Calloway ‘54 Traviata from La Scala to Ludo. Has Endeavour really not listened to it for years, and even if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be even more precious to him given his signed Calloway record from the first film was stolen?
RUSS: I fancy — being a test pressing – that the quality might not have been too terrific.
DAMIAN: He might be too stingy to buy you a pint but he’ll happily give away priceless rare records and travel to fancy places like Venice, has Endeavor won the pools?
RUSS: I think it reflected Endeavour’s overwhelming loneliness and a need for a friend. He does tend to go ‘all in.’ Joyce notwithstanding, there’s a bit of ‘only child’ about that impulse. The same with women, too. He falls fast and hard. The dam breaks – and whomever is the object of his interest has to bear the weight of all that has been penned up behind the wall for so long. Too much for some. Too much for most, one would imagine.
DAMIAN: During the murder enquiries, Strange gets a statement from the producer of the Higher Maths Module TV programme and says he was ‘Quite flamboyant, as is often the way with these people.’ Are television producers quite flamboyant, do you think?
RUSS: A Strange euphemism. Period ‘code’ for those who are ‘not as other men.’
DAMIAN: What about executive producers?
RUSS: Oh, certainly. Some more than others.
DAMIAN: Once again, series seven had a strong story arc as opposed to the more stand-alone and episodic nature of early Endeavour episodes and, of course, both the original Inspector Morse and Lewis. I personally favour this approach but is it also something you prefer or is there a particular demand from ITV, Mammoth Screen or Shaun and Roger?
RUSS: Going for a strong series arc was an attempt to deal with Shaun and Rog wanting to do a shorter run of three films. I think the developing crime story was a lot for people to keep in their head from week to week, but I very much didn’t want to do a ‘Previously on Endeavour’ recap ahead of each film’s overture.
DAMIAN: Last time we spoke I asked to what extent your vision for series eight might need to be adapted because of the delay in filming and you said it wasn’t 100% clear at that point (August 2020). Have you managed to keep to your original design or were there significant revisions along the way?
RUSS: We were a bit battered by Wartime Conditions. Who wasn’t? I mean — clearly we weren’t frontline health workers — praise them with great praise – but technically what we could achieve and realize on screen for the audience was impacted. So – we had to find new ways of doing things, and think our way around sundry physical problems. What we were going for would have been a challenge in any normal year — but given what we were up against in terms of changed working practises, they were probably ten times as challenging. We did our best to make sure you can’t see the join, as it were — but, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t tricky. I’ll clue you in to some of the workarounds further down the road.
DAMIAN: You also said that Endeavour was in a good place in terms of the stories and if you got it right, series eight could be the strongest run yet! Well, I’m bound to ask, did you get it right?
RUSS: Um — not for me to judge. “Man’s reach, Thursday…” But really – who knows?
DAMIAN: What can you tell us about the first film of series eight, STRIKER?
RUSS: Typically, as little as possible. It will all be there in the listings. Damien Timmer [executive producer/joint-managing director of Mammoth Screen] has wanted to touch on the beautiful game for a long time, and with our opportunities to do so diminishing, it felt like now or never. It’s funny — a whole bunch of things just seemed to line up for us in terms of this particular week in history, most of which we managed to fold into the story.
DAMIAN: And finally, as I always do, can I also ask what you personally remember from the year in question and what such social, political or cultural influences might have found their way into this series?
RUSS: Strange what one recalls, but I remember very clearly being at Shepperton Studios in the summer of ‘71 and a radio blaring out ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ by Middle of the Road. “Where’s your mamma gone?” which brings us back to Endeavour…
DAMIAN: We’ll discuss Bright and Endeavour shortly, but first I wanted to talk about your return to the theatre last June after a ten-year-absence. Why such a long break?
ANTON: Well, good question. I had two or three years of vocal problems. It was a really bad situation where nobody knew what was wrong with my voice. It was just sort of very unpredictable with muscular spasm. I had cameras down my throat trying to find out if anything terrible was going on and I think it was a combination of psychological things – things going on in my personal life. It was really difficult and I lost a bit of confidence about doing anything that I wasn’t absolutely in control of. So, when things came up for the stage, I just felt that I didn’t want to let people down. Again, I stopped doing audio-books as I felt I was going to let people down. As time went on, fortunately work kept coming in and I was offered other things.
When the play [The Pope] turned up last summer, it was just so good that I thought I really want to do this. And, I showed it to my kids and they said, ‘Dad it’s brilliant, you’ve got to do it’, but it’s a huge role, basically a two-hander – me and Nick Woodeson. I went and met James Dacre [artistic director] who I got on with immediately down at the Royal Derngate & Northampton and the theatre was lovely – a beautiful little Victorian jewel of a theatre – and it wasn’t the West End so I thought I can do this because it was very friendly, about 400 seats so it didn’t feel as though I had to shout!
DAMIAN: The play is a fictionalised encounter of your character, Pope Benedict, meeting with Pope Francis which explores the scandals involving child abuse and the financial running of the Vatican. Did you have any reservations about taking on a play dealing with such controversial issues – perhaps particularly the child abuse?
ANTON: Erm no, over the years I’ve been offered parts on tele with characters that I’ve looked at and thought I don’t want my kids to see me doing this and I’ve always had a gut feeling that something doesn’t feel right but no, I had no qualms about doing this because what’s wonderful about the play is it gives Benedict a voice and it gives a perspective on what happened and, we the public, don’t know about it and it has been intriguing why a man in his position would seemingly – and again this is all conjecture – turn a blind eye to such terrible things. It’s a wonderfully non-judgemental and very generous investigation into that and I think that’s why I felt I had to do it.
DAMIAN: An objective point of view so the audience could decide for themselves?
ANTON: Yes. The writer, Anthony McCarten, his films have been huge successes [The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour and Bohemian Rhapsody] and he does have a wonderful eye which is objective and he just touches something that is so full of humanity that it feels accessible and very recognisable when you see it and get a little window into somebody’s heart. He really just has a wonderful way of letting the audience in, especially as something as remote for most of us as life in the Vatican.
You know, on paper, a play or a film about two old men talking about religion you think, ‘Ooh, that’s exciting’, but actually it’s absolutely intriguing. The other lovely thing that happened was a lot of people came to it and said things like ‘I’m a practicing Roman Catholic and I was really concerned about coming to this play’ and thought they were going to be offended or outraged but they said things like it was ‘one of the best things they’d ever seen’ so that was wonderful.
DAMIAN: I was actually going to ask, since it was quite a small and intimate theatre if you noticed any priests or nuns in the audience?
ANTON: Oh, we did have a few yes – you couldn’t see them from the stage or identify them by their dog collars or whatever but we did have people who came to talk to us afterwards and said how absolutely absorbing it was.
DAMIAN: During our last interview we talked about some of the actors you admired and you mentioned Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce which is funny because they both star in the film version of the play, The Two Popes, made for Netflix. Have you seen it?
ANTON: Yes, it’s quite a coincidence and the film is brilliant.
DAMIAN: Back to the play, so you return to the theatre after ten years, it’s opening night and you get the 5-minute call to go on stage – can you describe what were you feeling at that moment?
ANTON: Ooh, ooh, it’s a mixture of ‘oh my God what have I done?’ [laughs] – nerves or butterflies don’t go away just because you’re old – but also real excitement and often fear and excitement are difficult to distinguish aren’t they? The symptoms are pretty similar! And it’s just a name we put on them that makes them one thing or the other but much more, I don’t know what it is about going out in front of a live audience, but it is at the same time a terrifying and stupid thing to do but in another way it’s incredibly liberating because unlike the tele, you’re not going to be edited. You’re not going to be watching the tele and think I’m sure I had a nice scene there and now it’s gone – it’s in your own hands for a couple of hours.
And it’s a lovely journey and particularly lovely because you’re working with people that you respect and enjoy their company. That was one of the great things about working with Nick because right from the beginning – two such good parts and the relationship is so fundamental – you really need to be happy about who you’re working with and to work with Nick was an absolute joy because we worked together years and years ago at the National in The Birthday Party so it just made everything easier.
But coming back to that moment just before you go on stage, you’re going on a little journey with a mate and we had a little agreement; I said to him when we started rehearsing, I said ‘Nick, we’re now of an age when one of us – or both of us! – is going to just look at the other and know that the other one hasn’t got a clue what to say!’ [we both laugh] and I said, ‘shall we have a pact that you forgive me in advance if I just don’t know what to say?’ and he said ‘absolutely’ so we had this mutual agreement. We had a great time – lots of laughs.
Anton during rehearsals
DAMIAN: Actors on the set of Endeavour might typically be on set from 7 or 8 in the morning to 6 or 7 at night which must be enormously draining physically but at least you can return home of an evening – how does this compare to the demands of theatre and staying in hotels?
ANTON: It is very different. A different sort of process and you have to manage that process. The thing about tele is somebody might pick you up in the early hours of the morning in the dark and cold in some pretty horrible places that are not very glamorous and then sit in a cold trailer for hours and hours and hours and then you might be called upon to do your little bit which may be quite an intense emotional moment out of chronological order while trying to find some emotional truth.
So you have 5 minutes of work and then back to the trailer in a completely de-energised state again for 3 or 4 hours and you might expect to do a scene – but then it’s changed or cancelled or shifted so it’s a whole different thing. That’s why I love to come back to theatre because of the rehearsal process which you never get in tele or film nowadays. The rehearsal process is just great – it’s where you stretch your muscles and interact and experiment. Do dangerous things in a safe place so it’s like a completely different job and yet the place where they do coincide as the same job is trying to express – as truthfully and as humanly as you possibly can – so that, if it can come from my heart, if it can come from some truth inside me, then there’s a better chance it will touch that place in the audience.
DAMIAN: Yes, well I’m glad you’ve said that because I’ve got a few questions on that exact theme really, that issue of finding the moment. I’ve visited the sets and location work and they do the technical rehearsals obviously; they get the camera angles, the lighting, they do the sound checks and then they do a few more sound checks but in terms of the Endeavour team, do the principle actors ever actually get to rehearse the acting before a take?
ANTON: Depends on how much time there is. We have a little sort of word run with the director before any of the crew come in. We’ll talk about the way the director wants us to come in from, whether we might sit or stand or if we are going to move during the scene but it is very, very perfunctory. It’s very quick because there isn’t time to explore and you’re expected at this stage to know the character and what they would probably do in that situation and you just need to get on with it. Luckily, because we’ve been doing it for so long together we have a kind of shorthand with each other. We know what’s right for us as actors much more quickly than if it was something new and we were beginning from scratch. Then you’d need a week or two to explore the relationships – well we have those relationships already!
DAMIAN: Last time we discussed your early days as an actor at RADA but I’d like to expand on this slightly further and ask you about the sort of acting techniques or theatre practitioners that you might have been exposed to back then?
ANTON: Well, at RADA, you see I don’t remember particularly reading tomes from Stanislavski and doing all that in those days – probably because I’m so lazy! [laughs] I mean it’s changed now, but it was virtually non-academic; you weren’t expected to read books or write essays and pass exams but I think nowadays they are. A lot of kids that I know, the academic aspect is quite substantial to get their diploma or whatever.
Russian theatre practitioner, Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), was a celebrated director, character actor and author of several influential books including his “ABC” of acting: ‘An Actor Prepares’, ‘Building a Character’ and ‘Creating a Role’. His autobiography, ‘My Life in Art’, is also highly recommended reading.
ANTON: Different directors came in to do different shows with us and they would of course bring with them their particular expertise or their interests. One of them might be more interested in a particular method than another. We were aware of the Method and actors like Brando and how they operated but there wasn’t anything formal like a focus on Stanislavski or anything like that. The exposure that I remember was the acting that I would see in the theatre who were inspirational, you know?
DAMIAN: Like at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool?
ANTON: Yeah, Jonathan Pryce doing Comedians and Bernard Hill, and then of course, people at the RSC, Ian Richardson – wonderful Ian Richardson! All these people, all that was percolated back to conversations we would have at RADA and those would be my influences. Definitely, so yes, to put it in a nutshell, it was less about what we were studying and more about what we were absorbing and what was percolated back through to us.
DAMIAN: You see, back when I was studying drama at college we were introduced to Artaud, Brecht, Grotowski -the usual suspects – and I didn’t really respond much to any of these but what really resonated was the work of Stanislavski so I read a lot of his books but then independently took this much further by exploring Lee Strasberg and the Method style of acting.
Strasberg (1901-1982) built on the work of Stanislavski and helped to develop “The Method”. He was also one of the teachers and artistic director at The Actors Studio where rising stars such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and James Dean trained. His later generation of “Method Actors” included Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando on the set of ‘On the Waterfront’. Their other classic collaboration were ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘Viva Zapata!’Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro discuss a scene during the making of ‘Taxi Driver’. The two have worked together many times but for me, at least in terms of a director/actor partnership creating unforgettably intense character studies, ‘Mean Streets’, ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Raging Bull’ remain their most significant collaborations.
DAMIAN: So when I think back – you’ve just talked about the actors that inspired you – but when I think back to the kind of films and actors who inspired me as a teenager learning about drama, the Method paved the way for some of the most outstanding collaborations in the search for behavioural or emotional truth in acting and realism – actors and director such as Brando and Kazan and De Niro and Scorsese.
ANTON: De Niro and Scorsese! Oh yeah, yeah, yeah – De Niro and Pacino – you don’t get any better than that. And of course Brando, when he was not messing about, I don’t know whether that’s to do with, obviously it’s influenced by, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily only to do with how they studied at the Actor’s Studio but something about them instinctively as human beings. They have this unbelievable mysterious something and you look them and even when they are doing nothing, you just can’t stop looking at them. How much that is to do with how they’ve been influenced by that tradition or how much they’ve just nurtured what they have as human beings I don’t know but they are just unbelievably magnetic to watch. It never fails to amaze. You know I’ve been watching a lot of De Niro and Pacino on youtube recently, clips of old movies and it’s just amazing and you think, what is it, what are they doing?
DAMIAN: I always got a sense – and this was obviously in the early days of their careers – that they didn’t know what it was they were doing either. Rather we were watching them learn as actors on a journey in which they were exploring both their characters and themselves.It was a great experiment and I think it goes all the way back to Montgomery Clift, James Dean and, of course, Marlon Brando. That period of acting was so rich and such a great time for experimentation.
ANTON: Yes, yes – exactly!
DAMIAN: Obviously as an actor himself, what’s Shaun like to work with when he’s directing?
ANTON: Oh, he’s great. Yes, he absolutely knows his stuff and benefits, of course, from having a crew that were pretty much continuously there from when we all began. So, he’s got a lot of very skillful practitioners around him who know what can and can’t be achieved. And they know how to achieve it very quickly and they can say to him, ‘Yeah, I know what you want but it might be better if we do that shot from blah blah blah’ and he’ll say, ‘absolutely brilliant.’ So there’s a real efficiency about the people around him to make his vision happen and he’s great. I think he wants to do more and think he may end up being more of a director than an actor.
DAMIAN: Really?
ANTON: Yes, but it’s great working together because he knows both sides of the job. It’s like he can interface between his technical requirements and the acting.
DAMIAN: What do you think you would be like at directing?
ANTON: Rubbish! Absolute rubbish because I’m not built for that. I like to be told where to stand, told what to say and told when I can have my lunch and if I’ve got the afternoon off and can go home! [laughs] You know, a director has to be there all the time and that’s not what I want to do with all the days in my life. I enjoy other things and fortunately I’ve been employed almost continuously, but if I was ever in a position where I just had to take everything and do everything 24 hrs a day, I don’t think I’d be very happy.
Also, the thing about directing is directors have a facility – the good ones – have a great skill to point you in the direction of what they want without showing you how to do it. I know from experience when I’ve done little things with students that my instinct is to get up to display and almost say do it like this and that is an anathema to an actor because it closes the door on your creativity and all your effort is to try to emulate it or reproduce something – and you think well he’s done it much better than I could so what’s left for me to do?
I remember I had a personal experience of that with Jonathan Miller years and years and years ago. Bless the man, he’s such a wonderful actor himself – and comedian – but he couldn’t resist getting up and saying ‘No, this is what I mean!’ and then you think OK, but there’s nothing left for me to do but try and match how they’ve done it. It’s awful and you feel sort of emasculated as an actor so I would be no good.
DAMIAN: Each Endeavour film has a different director which helps to keep the show visually fresh and unique, but what are the advantages and disadvantages of this – for example, presumably they can’t possibly know the characters as well as the actors who’ve been on the show since the beginning?
ANTON: Well, as you say, the advantages are that you get a fresh eye and the whole thing doesn’t become thematically repetitive and safe. A fresh eye will hopefully take a few risks and bring a kind of out of the box sort of view on it. The downside is that some directors won’t have that shorthand with the DOP or the sound guys who’ve been there all the way through – most of them have been there for the whole time and they’re familiar faces. They know their job and they know what can and can’t be done and one or two directors might have a sort of, not a clash, but they might be looking to do something that the cameramen or the sound man will just know is not the greatest solution and there might be little moments of friction or disagreement.
But that never usually happens. It’s a happy, happy crew and I think it’s so rare but we do get inevitably and understandably a new director coming in who will want to put their mark on it and will want to have a very distinctive contribution and why not? They’re doing their thing. So it’s a balance and most of the time it works beautifully when people find that balance but occasionally it can be a bit divisive.
DAMIAN: You mentioned this earlier and it goes back to the actors having a short hand between themselves as well as the crew. Is there ever a sense that the principal cast still have things to learn from each other as actors as you explore these characters – have you ever been caught off guard and thought that was interesting what such and such an actor was going for in such and such a scene?
ANTON: Yeah, yeah. I mean I think that happens all the time but perhaps in quite subtle ways and I think what we’d like to do more of is have a little more time to explore moments like this that come up and actually give them space to see how well it could work and find something to look at in a totally different way.
The constraints of time mean, actually, that is interesting but we just have to get on with it so we might take a sort of comprise through the interaction and you’re just left thinking we could have explored that and gone down that road but there isn’t time for that. Yeah, that happens quite a lot. But because we all respect each other’s skills – you know, working with Roger and Shaun in particular – but also all the guest actors who come in and bring something unique and we kind of want what you get in the rehearsal room of a play; wanting that in the context of a film – which, of course, you can’t have.
DAMIAN: I’ve been doing my interviews again with Russ and I recently reminded him of what he told me regarding your character that Bright was ‘a man even more out of his time than most in the 1960s’. So, I was wondering how on earth Bright is going to survive the 1970s?
ANTON: Ooh!, (mischievous laughter again] yes, yes, yes! Well, I can’t give too much away obviously…
DAMIAN: No, of course not. I meant more culturally in terms of the style and fashion of the era.
ANTON: You will see that the tensions that were arising at the end of the last series which exposed those cultural sort of challenges for him, they sort of take off in a big way and you see the man – which is what I’ve wanted for years actually, you see much more of the man behind the uniform. Out of uniform and into situations where he is potentially out of his depth, which of course, are the places where we all learn things quickest.
So it’s been much more fulfilling these last couple of series because we see him really up against it and in situations – that a man like that – you would expect to unravel. You don’t know whether he does or doesn’t – you’ll just have to wait and see! It is much more of what you were hinting at this time.
DAMIAN: Fans have wondered about Mrs. Bright for years now so wasn’t it a little cruel of Russ to finally meet her when she’s dying?
ANTON: Yes, it is cruel. You know, for years I didn’t even know whether she existed! The references to her could have almost been like wishful thinking. All the actors used to joke that she didn’t exist and he went home to a lonely house and sort of fantasied that he had a wife. But no, suddenly here she is and we had the wonderfully brilliant Carol Royle play her. It was great for me to open up the whole backstory about the daughter dying in India and it’s great for me to be able to begin that journey out of uniform and to see him at home in a different environment. And suddenly, an environment that challenges him really, really deeply and emotionally. So I’m very happy about that but not happy that it could be so brief and seems to be coming to an end. We’ll see…
DAMIAN: The scene with Bright where he confides to Max at the club and asks for his help was one of my favourites from the last or any series. Absolutely beautifully written and performed.
ANTON: Yes, people have remarked about that scene and said lovely things about it. That sort of encounter for me is what I’ve been wanting all the way through the series and every time Russ would write lots of those lovely scenes but they’d all be cut because of time. Such a shame but, yeah, I’m glad you liked that one.
DAMIAN: However, wasn’t it a curious choice for the audience to learn about Mrs. Bright’s cancer in a scene with Bright talking to Max rather than his wife? Because that would be the more obvious emotional choice wouldn’t it?
ANTON: I guess it would. Yes, and as I recall, they were having dinner and she’d come back from London and had a nice day and he’d made her dinner and then she suddenly starts to cry and he says. ‘what’s the matter?’ and then we cut dramatically. I think it was clever because you think, ooh, something big is going on but were not allowed to see that and then it comes with Max. I can see that dramatically it’s a device that keeps the audience wanting to know more and keeps that tension longer and if they had continued that scene together it would have been all exposed and wouldn’t have carried that curiosity.
DAMIAN: That’s very true. In the episode Mrs. Bright says ‘I don’t think I’ve been a very good wife.’ and he replies, ‘No man ever had a better.’ In the script he has an extra line, ‘Is there… something you want to tell me?’ so it did hint at that but you’re probably right in terms of keeping the tension going because the audience are left guessing and it could have been that she was having an affair.
ANTON: Yes, yes, which of course she did because there was another beautiful scene that got cut the year before where she says ‘they never meant anything’ so ask Russ about that.
[I later checked with Russ and he confirmed the following: ‘she said at some point “none of them meant anything. I just missed her so much.” Or words to that effect. The notion being that her infidelity was born of grief for Dulcie.]
DAMIAN: I think we can infer from some of the dialogue in the Club scene, along with the one earlier in the last series (PYLON) where Endeavour is talking to Max in his garden, that Max doesn’t meet any of his colleagues out of work. Although Endeavour and Thursday once often drank together at pubs during lunch or after work, isn’t it a pity that such seemingly lonely characters – lonely in their different ways such as Bright coping with his wife’s illness and Thursday’s marriage breakdown for example – they don’t spend more time together and do you think this isolation makes them more endearing to the audience?
ANTON: I think it’s something that certainly the audience will recognise because there is such a culture of – and certainly in those days – of not sharing feelings. Especially with men and I think people of a certain age will recognise that and connect to that and feel more familiarity with that isolation. We all know what that feels like and how difficult it is to break that habit – especially people of that generation.
DAMIAN: I mentioned Brando earlier, and we now know from various books and documentaries that he never prepared prior to filming during his later career – didn’t even bother to learn his lines – and yet, when he paused, took a moment or gave a certain look as he did in The Godfather or Apocalypse Now – it’s pure magic and electrifying to watch. Despite your protests to the contrary, I told you last time that you have that same sort of gravitas…
ANTON: NO, NO, RUBBISH – THAT’S NONSENSE!
DAMIAN: Well, I’m sorry but what I wanted to say was that you have that same sort of gravitas to command a scene. That’s my point and my question is to what extent can you as an actor with your vast experience rely of your little bag of tricks and does it become easier with age?
ANTON: Not at all. I don’t recognise what you’re saying about me. And, therefore I can’t rely on anything – I don’t rely on anything because I don’t believe it’s true.
DAMIAN: Come on now, in that club scene with Max there’s a moment where you take off your glasses and clean them and put them back on and I don’t think there’s any dialogue for a moment but it is electrifying…
ANTON: Well, that’s amazing and it’s lovely of you to say so but it’s not anything that I know how to do. It probably comes out of a moment of quite the opposite; of not knowing what to do and honouring that, do you know what I mean? A lot of the time, apparently, this is so fascinating – in life, in daily life – we have become socialised and habituated to moving around the world in a way that gives the impression that we know what we’re doing. The truth, if we’re honest about ourselves in our most quiet moments, is nobody knows the f*ck what’s going on! [Anton laughs wildly while I try to compose myself after hearing Anton use the F word]
You never know what you’re doing because you present – because of habit – you’ve created a persona and people ask who are you and you say. ‘Well I was born in such and such and I went to Drama school’ and that’s who you are. It’s a fabrication sustained through memory, habit, projections, and you walk around with this thing called a person that doesn’t actually exist, and actually, what really is there is that you’re just a body with thoughts flowing through and memories and some skills that you’ve learnt and… oh, I could go on about this for hours.
But to answer your question, what you see when you see something and think, wow – that was really amazing is me not covering up the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing at that moment.
DAMIAN: You’re too modest by far.
ANTON: Absolutely Damian, that is the truth! I mean I can accept – and this may be the answer to my own question about what it is that De Niro and Pacino have. What they do maybe is something to do with the fact that they’re brave enough not to use a trick or a mannerism or a way of speaking that they’ve learnt so what you get is pure vulnerability. It’s not acting – it’s revealing.
DAMIAN: That’s a very interesting way of looking at it.
ANTON: I don’t know if that’s true but it’s getting near to it because it’s just being willing to be there, to be naked in a moment and therefore reveal something that an audience will recognise in themselves. Sort of coping with life by presenting something. A person and actually when you stop, and usually it happens to us because of suffering or because life kicks us in the teeth or somebody dies or somebody you love leaves you, there are moments of absolute vulnerability and you get in touch with something real about what you are and maybe the actors that we like and we’ve been talking about have these mysterious qualities when they’re doing that to some degree. Consciously or unconsciously.
DAMIAN: I agree with all that and you’ve raised some really interesting points but I think I’ve researched and written enough about television to know good acting and what isn’t good acting when I see it. Now, there was a shot of you standing in your tiny little office smoking a cigarette and you look out of the window to Box who’s looking straight back at you so we get this marvelous shot of the two of you where you are both reflected in each other’s gaze…
ANTON: Yes, yes, yes – I do remember that.
DAMIAN: Neither actor is saying anything but you just look at Box and it’s a beautiful moment; very tense and yet very subtle as well. A lot of actors couldn’t do that as well because they’d overplay it.
ANTON: Well, I’m just delighted that that’s the effect and when I hear you say that it makes me feel it validates my trust in those moments when I don’t really know what to do and I can use that space and I can just be as honest as I can in that moment.
DAMIAN: As we’ve discussed, sometimes you’ll simply get what you referred to last time as a “very good, carry on” kind of scene but now you’ve got all this character development stuff. Is your approach or preparation to either of these any different – I suppose I’m trying to ask how you prepare for some of the more emotional scenes from this or the last series such as the tower collapse or Mrs. Bright’s illness?
ANTON: I know and I’m going to disappoint you I think Damian. I actually remember a scene that you will see this year which demands something on an emotional level that’s not like anything that’s happened before and just like the moment when I see the tower collapse or when I hear about the diagnosis, happily in my personal experience I don’t have a direct experience that I can draw on to replicate in any way. I remember saying to the director, ‘I haven’t got a clue about how to do this’ and she said ‘You absolutely know how to do it.’ And that did what this conversation is doing for me now, which is it just legitimizes the fact that even though I’m not the sort of actor who can go away and emotionally prepare in a Stanislavski way, something that happens which I am learning to trust more and more and more, actually in the moment – when they say action – that if I can be brave enough to let myself open up?
A bit like the difference between a hand being closed and a hand relaxing and opening. It’s like something inside and if I can allow it to just not grab hold of something to present to make me feel safe, you know like being emotional, or if I can say no and dare to just be open and vulnerable then again a space will be available for the audience to put their own version there. I can’t really give you any more than that. It’s a mysterious thing that I’m trying to learn and to trust more and love more because I think it’s a very precious thing to have, you know?
DAMIAN: Well, it is and you should because when you say a line like ‘a moment’s courage or a lifetime of regret’, there’s this hypnotic power that we talked about earlier…
ANTON: As you’re saying that, I’m just thinking about that great scene in Taxi Driver – great moment of acting. Do you know that scene quite early on in the film where he’s trying to express something to the boss of the taxi company he works for?
DAMIAN: Yes, I know the film very well.
ANTON: They go out the back and there’s this kind of older man and it’s the most heartbreaking scene I’ve ever seen because you feel this kid is going to explode and this older man doesn’t know what to do.
DAMIAN: I think it might be the ‘I got some bad ideas in my head’ scene with Peter Boyle.
ANTON: Oh, it’s wonderful. It’s one of my favourite moments in cinema.
DAMIAN: Absolutely stunning film. Now, albeit only temporarily, do you think the moral downfall of Thursday last series suggests that all bets are off now as we edge closer to the end of the show and anything is possible in the future for the characters?
ANTON: Yes I do. I think that’s what’s so exciting because there are so many sides to these characters that you couldn’t call it and you couldn’t say where they’re going to end up.
DAMIAN: At the end of the last series, my face – as I’m sure was the case with many fans – was absolutely beaming when Bright told Endeavour, Thursday and Strange that he’d be assuming command at Castle Gate. People really do care about these characters don’t they?
ANTON: Yes – it’s great. I know, people come up to me sometimes in the supermarket or at the train station and say ‘we watch it on television and we absolutely love it.’ And I just think that’s such a privilege to be involved in something that’s had that effect.
The CHIGTON GREEN CLOCK – telling the time. Never too quickly. Never too slowly. Telling the time for Chigton…
A SIGN for: “CHIGTON GREEN” Here the green. There the duckpond. Shops. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Fishmongers. Post Office.
Well-tended houses and gardens. Garden gnome – fishing…
CONFECTION (S6:E3)
Trumptonshire: Camberwick Green, Chigley and Trumpton
DAMIAN: This opening to CONFECTION was filmed with idyllic shots of the quaint village including a white picket fence adorned with red roses and the overture ends with Farmer Bell shooting Mandy-Jane with a shotgun. I wasn’t quite sure if I was watching Endeavour,an episode of Trumpton or David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. What mood were you and the director going for with this?
RUSS: Um… I think the picket fence was Leanne’s choice, as were the red roses. The Lynch probably more in her mind than mine – but I loved what she did with it. My only regret is that we ended up with the Roy Orbison and not her first choice. I love Roy Orbison — but the other track she ran with almost through to lock was a bit more kitsch and camp and torchy. A vocalist in the Kay Starr tradition… ‘Accused of stealing kisses, I’m guilty of the charge…’
DAMIAN: Preceding the scene where Endeavour meets Isla Fairford for the first time, you write that he ‘takes a moment – soaks up the atmosphere’ of the village which represents ‘a world and a life he left behind’. Not only is Isla obviously very attractive, but to what extent is Endeavour also attracted to the “notion” or “idea” of her and, rather ironically of course, the innocence she might represent in his longing for simpler times or the fact that he ‘grew up somewhere just like this’?
RUSS: What we were reaching for was a dull ache in his heart for somewhere – and more specifically – “someone” to call his own.
DAMIAN: Regarding the character of Isla, your script references Middlesex, a poem by Betjeman, with the following quotes: ‘Fair Elaine, the bobby-soxer, fresh complexioned with Innoxa… well-cut Windsmoor… Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green’. What was it about this poem that resonated with the character of Isla?
RUSS: Well — we were smashing together Christie, Trumptonshire, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in our creative Hadron Collider… and, you remember those wonderful illustrations across the opening of the Hickson Miss Marple?
The characters feel very late 40s through 50s. Actually – a touch of Long Weekend in there also. Mayhem Parva preserved in aspic. But there’s something sly about the eyes of all of them. And the Betjeman seemed to chime very happily as a short-hand for the kind of young woman she presents to the world. I think also – there’s a tiny echo of Barbara Shelley in Village of the Damned. Maybe a bit of Truly Scrumptious too. We were playing around a little with a Christie classic.
DAMIAN: In the Endeavour and Isla duck pond scene you write a line of action in the script that reads ‘One lonely heart lurches towards another.’ Obviously deceiving the audience is part of the game in murder mysteries but in reference to the cast and crew, do your scripts always tell the “truth” about a character or is there an equal objective to surprise those at the readthrough as well?
RUSS: Not the readthrough so much, as anyone’s first reading. By the time we get to that – most people are familiar with it. You want to convey in the stage directions the same experience the viewer will have when they see it for the first time. Physically and emotionally.
DAMIAN: The scenes ends with Endeavour asking Isla out on a date: ‘Look, I’m not really in the habit of, uh… – I just wondered if – perhaps – you’d care to go for a drink somewhere later… (a moment) With me.’ Is this supposed to be ironic considering Endeavour is exactly in the habit of falling for and attempting to romance wrong’uns?
RUSS: I think it reflects where he is at that point in his head. He’s not firing on all cylinders. He’s wounded emotionally. And a part of him has a fantasy of turning his back on the fight. Isla and her little boy are like a ready made, off the shelf family. He’s a weakness for those he perceives as vulnerable – so, of course, he’s drawn to her. Having failed to save his mother, he is compelled to try to save everyone else. As if in doing so, he might bring her back. It’s a nonsense – and childlike magic thinking, and I’m sure it’s all subconscious. But there’s a truth to the psychology of it.
ENDEAVOUR: I met someone. She’s got a kid. A boy. Five years old. It could be – I don’t know – something. (off STRANGE) Why not? Everybody else gets a shot – why should I be any different?
STRANGE: Because you are.
ENDEAVOUR: What if I don’t want to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about? Something to come home to.
STRANGE: I wouldn’t know. Some day. Maybe.
DAMIAN: Isn’t it about time for a strange bedfellow?
RUSS: Ho ho. Well — we’ve seen him on a date, haven’t we? I think he gets by. But there’s nobody special at the moment.
Back in NOCTURNE (S2:E2)
INT. THURSDAY’S OFFICE/POLICE STATION – DAY 4
ENDEAVOUR with THURSDAY…
THURSDAY: What’s this you were with Shepherd’s daughter at the pub?
ENDEAVOUR: It was just a drink.
THURSDAY: She’s a suspect. Christ, what’s the matter with you? Bat their lashes and you’re just…
ENDEAVOUR: I’ve got a life.
THURSDAY: Not on duty, you haven’t.
ENDEAVOUR: I wasn’t on duty.
THURSDAY: It shouldn’t matter. A copper’s a copper – first, last and always.
ENDEAVOUR: And where’s that got you?
THURSDAY – a kicked dog. Torn between shame and the urge to lash out. ENDEAVOUR instantly regrets the shot.
DAMIAN: Thursday lost all the money he lent to his brother, Charlie, there’s the marriage breakdown, the death of Fancy and then, of course, there was also the demotion. Was it the misadventures in his home or work life that was the final straw?
RUSS: I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at? In Thursday crossing the line? Oh – I think all of those things. He’s in a mess.
INT. PUB 2 – NIGHT 3
BOX: After the way they’ve treated you? I wouldn’t treat a dog like that. Christ, you must’ve noticed a change in your pay-packet? And you’ve still got a wife and kids to feed. (off THURSDAY) What’s next? They put you out to grass on some nothing job like old Reg? A man’s got his dignity, Fred – or he’s got nothing. Doesn’t make you a bad copper. Just makes you a smart one. Go on. Take the missus out this weekend. Treat her.
THURSDAY breaks. He reaches out – takes the envelope, and puts it into his pocket. BOX relieved.
BOX (CONT’D): Blimey. A minute there, you had me giving it two-bob, thrupenny bit.
THURSDAY: You and me both.
BOX: To be fair. I was no different the first time. Second time, you barely feel it. After that, it’s all gravy. Go on, then. Get ‘em in.
THURSDAY – his soul forfeit.
DAMIAN: As you are very well aware, fans have wondered about Mrs. Bright for years now. Years! So, wasn’t it a little cruel to the devoted curious that we finally meet her when she’s dying of cancer?
RUSS: Mmm. Rules of drama, old man. Come in as late as possible, get out as soon as you can. It’s always been a case of how much screentime we have available.
INT. DINING ROOM/BRIGHT’S HOUSE – NIGHT 1
MRS. BRIGHT, (54), a great Society beauty, and the Deb of the Year in 1934, sits at the table – distracted. BRIGHT enters – bearing something lovely for her supper – which he sets before her.
BRIGHT: You are good to me, “Puli”.
DAMIAN: Why does she call him Puli?
RUSS: From their time in India. It means Tiger. For obvious reasons.
DAMIAN: Indeed. The scene in the film ends with ‘Oh ‘Puli’. I don’t think I’ve been a very good wife.’ and with a beautifully reassuring smile, Bright replies ‘No man ever had a better.’ In the script he has an extra line, ‘Is there… something you want to tell me?’ Either way however, and I thought he actually knew she was seriously ill before this, did you consider it more dramatic for the audience to learn about it from his conversation with Max rather than his wife?
RUSS: No – this was the moment she told him. I’d imagine the cut was more to do with timing. I think the question from Bright was possibly a case of crossed wires. Given their history, when she says ‘I don’t think I’ve been a very good wife,’ his immediate lurch would be the thought that she has committed some indiscretion, not that she’s about to tell him her number is up.
INT. MAX’S CLUB – DAY
MAX waiting. BRIGHT makes his way through the crowd. MAX stands to greet him.
MAX: Chief Superintendent.
BRIGHT: Doctor. It’s very good of you to meet me.
MAX: Not at all. What may I get for you?
BRIGHT: Oh – er… A brandy, I think.
MAX attracts the attention of a passing waiter.
MAX: Albert. A brandy, if you would.
WAITER heads off.
MAX: (CONT’D) They do quite a decent spot of supper.
BRIGHT: Excellent. Excellent. I’m sure.
MAX: Now – how may I be of service?
BRIGHT: I may rely on your discretion. As a medical man.
MAX: Always. Please. Speak freely.
BRIGHT: My wife has been diagnosed with cancer of the lungs. Inoperable, according to the specialist. She’s scolded me for an optimistic fool, but I wonder if you might recommend anyone from whom one could seek… a second opinion.
MAX: Well, there’s no better man in England than Sir Julian Fitzalan. I know him slightly and would be happy… (off BRIGHT’S reaction) Chief Superintendent?
BRIGHT: Julian is my wife’s specialist…
DAMIAN: I thought this scene was perfectly written, shot and performed – certainly one of my favourites from series 6. The scene heading in the script simply states ‘Max’s Club’ and I was wondering where and what this might be?
RUSS: Well — thank you. There’s a few Gentlemen’s Clubs in Oxford – but I think we were sort of leaning towards Frewen’s as a model – which is St.Aldate’s. Yeh — it was lovely to be able to have Anton and Jimmy share a two hander. And, of course, they both played it to perfection. There was a fair bit of weeping from certain hard-bitten crew members when the scene was shot, so that was a good sign.
DAMIAN: I’m presuming from the dialogue that this is the first time that the two have met outside of work -excluding funerals and suchlike- and we know from the scene in the garden at Max’s home that he and Endeavour don’t socialise either. Has Max not got anyone?
RUSS: Max’s private life is for the moment a closed book. It would be lovely to put some flesh on the bones. We saw a little more of Max in this run — his home, his club.
DAMIAN: Endeavour lost his father, Cyril, in HOME (S1:E4) but they had a troubled relationship and unlike two little boys I know extremely well, he wasn’t fortunate in having a special bond with his grandfather. However, he did have Thursday and that family unit of Fred, Win, Joan and Sam represented the happy home that Endeavour never had. Throughout series 6 Endeavour is ‘sickened’ by an ‘unrecognisable’ Thursday, never more so when he sees him drinking and smoking (a cigarette!) at the Indian restaurant with the Droogs. Endeavour suppresses the evidence in the suitcase that would have implicated Thursday in the conviction and hanging of the wrong man in the Clemence case at the beginning of series 6 – would he have done the same by the end of film 3 or the beginning of 4?
RUSS: Yes – I don’t think their friendship is thrown away as quickly or easily as that. Thursday in his way is punishing himself for Fancy. He hates himself because he blames himself for Fancy’s death – every bit as much as Endeavour blames himself — and I think the temptation with Box has to be viewed through that lens. It’s an act of self-harm. Almost as if he wants to be caught and punished for something. Anything that will bring an end to his torment.
The cigarette… He’s also feeling like yesterday’s man, and – I think you asked me in an earlier Q&A about why he puts away his pipe after glancing through to Box and Jago. Well — they’re the coming men – younger, The Sweeney in waiting… and they’re all on the tabs. Thursday suddenly feels his pipe is perhaps old fashioned. If he’s going to run with this mob, he’d better start fitting in. But I don’t think Endeavour gives up on him – or ever would entirely. There’s too much between them.
Endeavour is hurt and confused by Thursday’s uncharacteristic behaviour. Rog was adamant that he didn’t want Thursday’s crossing of the line to be a ruse or a wheeze – a wink to the audience – in order to get the bad guys – which is probably the line I would have erred towards. But it was just as important to me that he came to his senses of his own will.
ENDEAVOUR: I’m sorry about the Disciplinary. You deserved better.
THURSDAY: I don’t know about that. Anyone should answer for what happened to George Fancy, it’s me. I was in charge.
ENDEAVOUR doesn’t know where to go with this THURSDAY.
ENDEAVOUR: Well – good luck with it, anyway. (a final throw of the dice) If you – fancy a drink some time..?
THURSDAY: Yeh. Yes, we, uh – we must do that.
Offered with all the conviction of one who has no intention of doing any such thing. Worse – they both know it.
PYLON (S6:E1)
DAMIAN: Why couldn’t Thursday reach out to Endeavour?
RUSS: It was important to illustrate that the relationship had changed. That they were no longer the happy few, the band of brothers from Cowley. And that was true with all the relationships. Bright – sidelined. Strange – making his way up the greasy pole. Endeavour and Thursday estranged. It was important that the audience shared in their pain.
ENDEAVOUR: My report. Syringe is in the bag.
THURSDAY: I’ll see the Guv’nor gets it.
ENDEAVOUR: Anything?
THURSDAY: Early days. You know how it is.
Seeing ENDEAVOUR in CID is more ‘yesterday’ than THURSDAY can bear.
PYLON
DAMIAN: ‘Yesterday’, hardly a coincidence given your frequent Beatles references and the aptness of some of the lyrics…
Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Suddenly,
I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shadow hanging over me
Oh yesterday came suddenly
…but why did you want ‘Mad About the Boy’ playing at Thursday’s home?
RUSS: It just helped edge Thursday into the idea that perhaps he was losing Win too. If she was going off to ballroom with another man, and playing Mad About the Boy on the radiogram… It all played into his lost equilibrium.
DAMIAN: You described Endeavour as the little wooden boy (in reference to Max acting as his conscience in the garden scene from APOLLO) in one of our previous interviews and after Isla is arrested in CONFECTION, you write that Endeavour ‘casts a look back at the house. Shepherd and Henry [Isla’s five-year-old son] in the window. Another unhappy little boy.’ Do you sometimes think of Endeavour as a little boy?
RUSS: Not particularly — but it’s a large part of what made him, isn’t it? There was a much bigger spat between Isla and Endeavour at the car — a literal spat, insofar as I think Endeavour got a faceful of saliva – along with some very damning words from her.
But Henry — felt very much like an echo of his own history.
DAMIAN: You’re very perceptive but circumspect regarding melancholy childhoods aren’t you?
RUSS: ‘I am not I; thou art not he or she; they are not they’ There’s a fair bit of mud to dredge. Long closed rooms and deserted galleries on the upper floors. But no more than anyone else, I’m sure. It would be a mistake to draw any particular conclusions from it.
DAMIAN: All of the previous film titles of series 6 were self explanatory but why DEGÜELLO?
RUSS: You know my fondness for Westerns. At one point – the night before the gunfight – which I’d intended to be a much larger set piece – at the Four Winds quarry – I had Thursday singing along with Dean Martin on the turntable – ‘My Rifle, My Pony and Me.’ from Rio Bravo.
It was a much bigger build up for all of them. Long dark night of the soul stuff. But ‘Degüello’ as you know was a bugle call ordered by Santa Ana at the Siege of the Alamo. I believe the more or less literal translation is ‘cut throat’, but it’s a signal that ‘No quarter’ is to be given. That the fight will be to the death, and that no prisoners will be taken.
EXT. CRANMER HOUSE ENTRANCE – DAY 2
SANDRA emerges into a world of swirling grey dust.
She gasps what seems to be her last breath – and collapses out of frame…
…into ENDEAVOUR’S arms.
ENDEAVOUR looks up the tower. Shocked. Traumatised.
DEGUELLO (S6:E4)
DAMIAN: Although Newham is mentioned, I couldn’t help but think of the Grenfell Tower tragedy during the Cranmer House disaster, especially with the casting of the mum and her young daughter. Indeed, your script specifically states they are ‘Afro-Caribbean’, was this on your mind too?
RUSS: I was working very late the night Grenfell happened and had the TV on for company. I remember seeing the first phone camera footage coming in, and it was clear straight away that it was an utter catastrophe which would result in terrible loss of life. We’ve all seen fires – but I don’t think any of us had ever seen anything to compare with that. Not here. The only thing that springs to mind is the R101 Disaster. Something that was instantly beyond human agency to contain. Watching it, one couldn’t comprehend that there could be such a conflagration without some sort of accelerant. And, of course, we know now that it was the cladding – without which it would never have gone up the way it did, or spread so rapidly or so fiercely. That this was happening in the heart of the capital…
So… But that wasn’t the inspiration, although, obviously, it certainly coloured one’s approach. We’d considered developing a story that drew on Ronan Point the previous year, but then Grenfell happened and it wouldn’t have been at all appropriate. But I think the level of civil indifference and arse-covering by all responsible parties – which is still being covered – concerned with Grenfell fed into our story. Essentially, people died because money was deemed to be more important than their lives. They died because they were less well off than their neighbours. Because they were held to be of small account. One has to be careful what one says and writes about it because the Inquiry is ongoing and criminal charges may follow. But, to borrow a lawyerly phrase, if ‘one takes oneself out of this case’ and talks in more general terms… It does feel as if one has been hearing the phrase ‘lessons must be learned’ for the majority of one’s adult life. Meaningless hand-wringing and lip-service contrition. It’s interesting to compare the wholly unbelievable pack of lies some professional villain will offer from the dock with the elegant and expensive sophistry of corporations and government at national and local level. The latter groups would likely not consider themselves as in any way comparable to the former — but in the end if comes to down to this. They are both lying to avoid responsibility and consequence.
In part, when people like those in Grenfell die, they do so because successive governments – with the connivance of a sympathetic press – have sold the lie that we can have a functioning and safe society without having to pay for it. It’s forty years we’ve been chasing this illusion. The asset stripping of the UK plc. Of course — some people have done very nicely out of it. But they’ve always done very nicely, thank you very much. I think we had Thursday nod to it years ago. ‘It’s the same the whole world over, it’s the poor what gets the blame, it’s the rich what gets the pleasure, ain’t it all a blooming shame.’
DAMIAN: Indeed. Let us move on. Marvellously nefarious performance but I thought the character of Jago was terribly underwritten. I obviously understand why now but would it have been possible to develop him further so we knew a little bit more about him without giving the game away?
RUSS: Anything is possible, and we could have gone further in drawing him out, but I think we quite liked all the attention being on Box, with Jago appearing as not much more than his side-kick, only to invert that power dynamic at the last.
DAMIAN: Tell me about your original idea to include a flashback to the snooker hall with both Fancy and Jago and why it wasn’t filmed?
RUSS: I thought it might have helped the audience – but it wasn’t practical for a number of reasons.
DAMIAN: ‘Surprise, you couldn’t see me for Box’. Was Jago’s line improvised because it isn’t in the script?
RUSS: I would imagine that to be the case. I’d intended a much bigger shoot out – but the best laid plans, etc.
Once Upon a Time in Oxford
Four guns speak almost as one. BOX shoots JAGO. JAGO shoots BOX. ENDEAVOUR and THURSDAY shoot JAGO. BOX and JAGO go down – JAGO mortally wounded. ENDEAVOUR kicks JAGO’s gun away, and watches the light die in his eyes – while THURSDAY sees to BOX.
BOX: I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave you to it.
THURSDAY: I know.
BOX: Who’d’ve thought…
DAMIAN: In contrast to what was scripted, isn’t the scene as shot and edited rather more ambiguous?
RUSS: Is it? I’ll take your word for it.
DAMIAN: And, despite what both you and Simon Harrison told me in our interviews last year, he did redeem himself after all?
RUSS: We lied.
DAMIAN: Was this always part of his journey as planned from the beginning?
RUSS: There’s a certain amount of development as you watch some relationships and performances across the early films in a run.
DAMIAN: Why was series 6 the right moment to introduce the house we know from Inspector Morse?
RUSS: Well — the whole series he’s been looking for somewhere to call his own, after all the various flats and dossing in the office. But we also know he’s not exactly loaded — so somewhere that had been a squat with an unhappy history… there goes the neighbourhood. It felt organic that he might have come into his long term home by such means. He is forever surrounded by ghosts.
INT. LIVING ROOM/SQUAT – DAY 2
DULCE DOMUM sprayed on the wall… STRANGE’S attention lands on the graffito.
STRANGE: (mispronouching it, natch) Dulce domum.
ENDEAVOUR: Sweet home.
STRANGE casts an eye over the wretched state of the place.
STRANGE: No place like it.
DEGÜELLO
DAMIAN: What was the idea behind the Jag on the scrapheap which was then restored to its former glory by the end?
RUSS: It reflected where Endeavour and Thursday were at the start of the run — and, again, it felt right that the black Jag be restored to Endeavour by the end. Something put out for scrap – dismissed and disregarded by all for the next bang up to date thing — that felt very much like Endeavour. And like the house – it’s a hand me down. Something wonky in some way. But his affection for the Jaguar… looks set to be lifelong.
DAMIAN: ‘I hope this will become clear in the watching’ you told me when I asked about the moustache last year. Did it become as clear as you would have liked or would you have preferred the following not to have been cut:
ENDEAVOUR: You. I thought I knew who you were – but this past year, I barely recognise you.
THURSDAY: Nice tache. (which brings ENDEAVOUR up short) You’ve never been one to follow fashion. So, what’s that all about?
ENDEAVOUR: Seemed like a good idea at the time. I don’t know. Maybe it’s like Nicholson. Living with something you can’t put right.
THURSDAY: George, you mean?
ENDEAVOUR: I couldn’t stand to wake up every day and look at the man in the shaving mirror. The face that’d… let him down. I thought… if it was someone else staring back, I could forget it. If it didn’t happen to that face – I could fool myself it never happened at all.
THURSDAY: Perhaps we’ve all been hiding one way or another. From ourselves. From each other. From George. You’ve always given me too much credit. I’m not what you think.
ENDEAVOUR: Yes – you are.
THURSDAY: Nah. I’m just an old flatfoot with too many miles on the clock.
ENDEAVOUR: What’s going on? This isn’t work. This is something else.
THURSDAY: I took a wrong turn, and it cost me. But I can see a chance now to set things straight.
DEGÜELLO
RUSS: Mmm. Again – I think this was a request. The boys – Shaun and Rog – asked for something which explained it. So, I wrote this exchange for them. Which, when they read it, they thought was too self aware. Sometimes – less is more.
DAMIAN: Endeavour tried to forget the death of Fancy and Thursday took a wrong turn. In contrast, both Bright and Strange refused to be bribed and the latter never gave up on trying to get justice for Fancy. To what extent were Bright and Strange the real heroes of series 6?
RUSS: I think it was about the quartet – getting the band back together, overall. But, yes. It was lovely to strike those notes with Bright and Strange. And they were both hugely important. I don’t think one should imagine that Endeavour or Thursday had given up. Endeavour wouldn’t let it rest, either. They were both… winded, I think is the best way to look at it. What happened to Fancy hurt them both deeply — and knocked them back. They each have their strengths and weaknesses – but that’s what friends are for, isn’t it? When you stumble, they make sure you don’t fall. The reaction to it all was quite extraordinary though. People were getting quite cross that one had made them suffer for so long. But that had to be. If we’d just shrugged off Fancy’s death by the end of the first reel – it would have been pretty unsatisfying. By the time we got to the end, hopefully the audience had been on a credible emotional journey with them all.
DAMIAN: I’ve asked some of the cast this same question but I wonder what your take will be: albeit only temporarily, do you think the moral downfall of Thursday suggests that all bets are now off and anything is possible for the future of the show and its characters in terms of what the audience thinks they are ethically capable of?
RUSS: Yes, perhaps.
DAMIAN: What can you say about the last film of series 7, ZENANA?
RUSS: Er… There’s an advisory referendum… Lady Matilda’s college is exploring the notion of going co-ed. That’s the jumping off point. The good end happily and the bad unhappily. Or something like that.
DAMIAN: Will series 8 be the last adventure?
RUSS: Nothing is written.
DAMIAN: I don’t know if you can remember much about our very first interview back in 2014 but I said it surely can’t be a coincidence that so much of your work features the police and detectives and you replied that ‘it’s mostly coincidence.’ Well, I was delighted to hear that you’ve scripted a new TV series and I was wondering what it was about?
RUSS: A very old friend from school – Andrew O’Connor – who amongst his manifold achievements has been responsible for Peep Show, and in the theatre is intimately involved in the Derren Brown shows – got in touch. He asked me if I’d be interested in adapting the tremendously successful Roy Grace novels by Peter James for television. They’re a very different kettle of fish to my Oxford adventures — leaning more towards thriller / procedural territory. And they’re very much Peter’s stories. But they have a distinctive identity – set in Brighton. Grace is an interesting modern copper. They’re contemporary – which is something I haven’t done for a while. John Simm is playing Grace. So… Watch this space. More anon, no doubt.
DAMIAN: Russ, thank you very much indeed… oh, there was just one more thing. I know you’re familiar with the Cake Paradox but let me ask you about the Sandwich Dilemma. You’re having lunch at the Thursday house and Win has made a variety of sandwiches to show off her Monday to Friday range. However, you and a friend arrive a little late and there are only two sandwiches left: the cheese and pickle or the sandwich she makes for Fred on a Wednesday. Now, you’d really like to have the cheese and pickle but that would only leave the Wednesday Special for your friend and he or she might reveal the much discussed fillingto the world! Which do you choose?
RUSS: The Wednesday Special, of course.
DAMIAN: See you down the road?
RUSS: Until then.
We leave Russ there with his Wednesday Special, the weight of the world on his shoulders and the fate of Oxford’s finest in his hands.And what lovely hands they are too.ROLL END CREDITS.
MATTHEW: Well, that’s the 64 million dollar question. I think it depends on the time of the making of the program as well. Coronation Street has spanned decades without change, even when the style and tone don’t necessarily address a modern audience. The big tunes of Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em, Dad’s Army, Tales of the Unexpected and many more of the 70’s classics have such active melodic elements that one almost immediately can remember it. Therein I think that’s where times have changed a little. Strong melodic identity has now become possibly secondary to a robust sonic character.
DAMIAN: What are your top 10 most iconic TV themes from the 60s and what makes them so memorable today?
MATTHEW: That’s a tough one since I wasn’t born until 1974! I’m afraid I’m from a different era, and I would be cribbing if to create a top ten.
DAMIAN: Well, I was born a year later than you and that hasn’t stopped me from having a go! I also asked Russ for his favourite themes (he added that they arne’t by any means definitive – but rather amongst those that mean something to him)and we both came up with Star Trek, The Saint,Doctor Who, Stingray and The Avengers. His other choices were Randall & Hopkirk, The Prisoner, White Horses, Robinson Crusoe and Public Eye while my other picks were Fireball XL5, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds and Mission: Impossible.I would have also liked to include Batman but we’re limited to ten choices each.
Anyway, to what extent would you agree that the sound of many film and television scores during the 60s owed much to the popularity of the Bond films and the incredibly innovative work by the great John Barry?
MATTHEW: John Barry was an incredible composer beyond doubt. His style has continuously been nodded to throughout film history, and indeed I’ve done it myself in this series of Endeavour. There were so many great film and television composers around during that era. I think it was a real period of experimentation and development in terms of style, harmony and instrumentation. The fall in popularity of orchestral only scores, the use of new electronic instruments, big bands jazz scores etc.
John Barry.
DAMIAN: What about a top 10 from the 70s?
MATTHEW: Ah, now that’s a more straightforward question for me this time. In no particular order, I would have to say; Dallas, The Muppet Show, Fawlty Towers, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, Open All Hours, The Good Life, Happy Days, The Wombles, Roobarb and Custard and Battlestar Galactica.
DAMIAN: I’d certainly agree with you on Dallas and Battlestar Galactica. Again Russ and I had some that were the same – Van Der Valk (Eye Level), Tales of the Unexpectedand The Persuaders. His other choices were: Rockford Files, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Tinker Tailor (nunc dimittis), I Clavdivs, Thriller, All Creatures Great and Small and Catweazle. My remaining choices were: UFO, Space 1999, The Six Million Dollar Man, Return of the Saint and erm, Charlie’s Angels.
In what ways did the sound of scoring for television change from the 60s into the 70s?
MATTHEW: I guess for television, the increased use of electronic means of making music would have been down to the availability and more affordable means of access to music technology. So technologies out of reach for most TV composers during the early sixties would have become more accessible during the latter part of the seventies and an explosion in the eighties.
DAMIAN: And what are some of the most significant changes in how the music was written and performed back in the 60s and 70s compared with today and the work you do?
MATTHEW: Chalk and cheese, or rather a pencil and CPU. Mocking up a music score for a director or producer to approve consisted of playing a few ideas on the piano and saying ‘this will be the strings, this the brass etc.’ Now, with the level of technology at our fingertips, a composer can render a very close facsimile to what is going to become the final recorded score. Technology has become so unified to what we do now that it’s no longer possible to write purely traditionally as at some point a demo or mock-up will be required from a TV show to big-budget movie. A few composers are lucky enough to still work that way, but you’re really talking Hollywood giants like John Williams.
John Williams
That doesn’t mean the formation of the initial idea isn’t still a pencil and paper. I do work that way myself a lot, but at some point, it has to hit the computers now. Computers have enabled us all to work quicker, and the demands of television now mean shorter delivery periods.
DAMIAN: I know from our first interview that you often discuss the music in some detail with Russ, the directors and producers. Also, you are sometimes given a guide score by the editors, directors and producers. Given the nature of APOLLO (S6:E2) and the Supermarionation sequences, I was wondering to what extent the music for that was discussed during pre-production and filming rather than post and did the name Barry Gray happen to come up at all?
MATTHEW: To carve a score that nods to Barry Gray would have been obvious and what we do with Endeavour is to perhaps bow to a reference that helps set us in an era, but certainly no intention to reference too heavily. In this case, it was directed by Shaun, and he had an evident sound in mind from a previous episode I had scored for Endeavour, so we developed our ideas from a single tone and melodic element from another of our films.
Barry Gray
With the body of work now I’ve established quite a lot of the score is usually temp’d with my own work from previous scores. Occasionally a director will pool from other sources, and every music score I try to add something new, so the library grows each season. With APOLLO, Shaun was very keen that we worked the old fashioned way, spot the film with very little or no guide as we could chat and form ideas rather than be guided too much. Was a great experience.
Matthew with Kate Saxon who directed ZENANA (S7:E3)
DAMIAN: Each film has a different director so there’s always a fresh new visual look, do you ever have a disagreement with any of the directors regarding their particular take on how their film should sound and which you feel might not remain faithful within the music universe of Endeavour?
MATTHEW: No, never. It’s a significant team effort, and I think that anyone who comes into the world of Endeavour is always keen to keep that sense of team experience. I will always try to capture what a director, producer or executive producer wants, but the great thing about Endeavour is there’s a palette at the core. However, I’m always amazed by how much the series can take in terms of its musical development. It’s truly a joy to see what we can do next and to have the support and trust of the team makes that job so much easier to be bolder and more experimental while still existing within the Endeavour universe.
DAMIAN: You told me before in another interview that the application of music rather than the specifics of thematic, harmonic and textual content is of equal importance and the genius is in the placement of the music. Surely this is very subjective in nature so might this be a possible contentious issues between a director and a composer?
MATTHEW: It’s not as subjective as you’d think. The placement may shift a few frames here or there, or a music cue dropped or moved entirely, but that’s what the spotting session is for. Of course, things can develop through the writing and review process, but of the many great directors I’ve worked with on the series, there’s never really a contention. A discussion about how either might approach a scene, but you’d be surprised that when it fits, it tends to make everyone feel it’s right.
DAMIAN: I know that Shaun has visited the recording of the music in the past and you’ve mentioned that he already had a sound in mind for APOLLO, does he have lots of notes or just trust you to get on with it?
MATTHEW: As I’m sure you will have seen from many of the interviews with colleagues about Shaun that he knows exactly what he’s looking for but can keep that sense of collaboration between the team. From a composers perspective, it’s always been an excellent experience working with Shaun. He’s keen to allow the space for creativity, so it’s usually a discussion about the general feel we’re looking for the audience to experience, with some details about textures. After that, it’s pretty much over to me.
Rather than detailed notes, Shaun is excellent at focussing on what needs tweaking at the review session in person. So, Shaun will come over to my studio with producers, and we’ll go through the score after I’ve worked in any comments from Damien, Helen or our producer this series Jim. We work through the changes, I make them with everyone in the room, and at the end of the day the score is signed off and ready for the orchestration and music preparation process before getting the music in front of The London Metropolitan Orchestra, who bring it all to life.
Matthew conducting the LMO
DAMIAN: What are some of the most commonly used musical instruments in creating the sound of Endeavour and how might this have evolved to reflect the new decade?
MATTHEW: Endeavour has a very traditional background with Morse, the orchestra being at the heart of each score. Strings, piano and harp are pretty much the staples of the Endeavour sound. Less to do with the period change, I’d say I’ve introduced significantly more sound design and electronic characters to augment the orchestra to create new flavours and textures which are more where we all feel the score should go.
Howard Shore
DAMIAN: I have so many favourite composers but high on the list would be Howard Shore so I mean it as a compliment when I say that your scores sometimes have a The Silence of the Lambs or Se7en feel to them during the more tense and thrilling moments. I don’t know if you know what I mean but can you describe the style and what instruments are used?
MATTHEW: That’s incredibly kind of you to say so! Exactly how I’ve spoken about evolving the sound. Through more extended orchestral techniques, the use of synthesisers and electronic sound sources, expanding the orchestra to become something similar in size to films and treating each score more like a film score, than TV. These days I don’t think there’s a distinction as much as there used to be. People digest film and TV in so many similar ways that why can’t TV sound like a film?
DAMIAN: You’re often asked to experiment with themes, songs, cunning musical clues, historical references and, of course, there’s the classical music and opera. What do you consider to be some of your biggest challenges for series six?
MATTHEW: Series six seems such a long time ago now. The time between reading scripts and it hitting screens is six months or more. Bright’s staring moment on the zebra crossing was a new one for me, the childlike mystery moments in APOLLO was a new texture. I never see these as challenges really, it’s rare in a series to get so many opportunities to do something new and different in every film without it feeling out of character of the show overall. I guess that’s the genius of the story writing, acting and production that allows me to do that.
DAMIAN: Tell me a little bit more about creating the music for Bright’s Public Information Film in PYLON (S6:E1), it must have been fun to do the “If the Pelican can – then so can you” song?
MATTHEW: Yes, that was a bit of fun, a quick chat with Russ, a bit of humming and warbling on my part, and there it was.
DAMIAN: And what were some of the biggest musical challenges on series seven?
MATTHEW: There is a big trick we’ve done this year, and a few in Twitter Land and social media have started to twig, but no one has got it spot on, yet so I’d hate to spoil it for all our international friends!
DAMIAN: You’ve used the term ‘score personality’ to me before to describe the sound of an individual story. Which score from series seven would you say has the biggest personality?
MATTHEW: That’s like saying which of your children is your favourite! They are all so different this year, and yet there’s a running theme that we’ve never had before across an entire series and not just La Cura.
DAMIAN: I ask you this every year but are there any updates on when there will be a proper soundtrack of all the Endeavour scores released?
MATTHEW: It’s been lovely to have so many people ask for this, but sadly it’s not my gift to give. A few ideas are banding around, but as yet, nothing firm.
DAMIAN: Since we’re in the 70s now, what are the chances we can get a little bit of Geoff Love on Endeavour?
MATTHEW: Ha! I think you’d need to talk to one Mr R Lewis about that one.
DAMIAN: Matthew, thank you very much indeed.
MATTHEW: It’s always a pleasure and thank you for the always thought-provoking questions.
DAMIAN: Our friend Dr Maximilian Theodore Siegfried de Bryn proved resilient to much of the culture and fashion of the 1960s but what are the chances of him succumbing to disco fever during the new decade?
JAMES: Well, I really can’t see Max going full Saturday Night Fever, but there are a few nods to 70s fashions starting to appear. Watching some of the news footage and TV shows from the early 70s, I noticed that everyone seemed to have long hair. Even serious politicians like Edward Heath had pretty impressive sideburns, so I did make a conscious effort to grow my hair. I told Russell I was aiming for a Rodney Bewes style bouffant. Viewers of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads will understand.
The wonderful ‘Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads’ (1973-74) with James Bolam and Rodney Bewes (right)
I don’t think we are going to see Max strutting his stuff at the local disco, but there are hints in past episodes that he enjoys popular culture, in particular the Eurovision Song Contest, so I could imagine him happily tapping his feet to Mary Hopkin and Clodagh Rogers.
DAMIAN: What do you personally remember of the 70s; any key historic social, political or cultural moments that defined the decade for you?
JAMES: I was interested to read up on some social history about the early 70s before we started filming. It was certainly a time of much unrest and political upheaval, I mean, its incredible to think of the three-day-week happening today.
I was born in 1976, so my memories of the 70s are pretty vague, but I do remember some of the TV from that time, Tom Baker as Doctor Who, and Larry Grayson’s Generation Game. And Butterscotch Angel Delight was a culinary favourite. We moved house, and that was during the week of the 1979 election, so I guess that was a memory of quite an important political event.
EXT. MAX’S HOUSE – DAY
ENDEAVOUR on the doorstop. MAX opens the door — wearing a cook’s apron, and with a knife in hand, he looks as if he’s just stepped out of his mortuary.
MAX: (re: the knife) Nothing sinister. I was just getting a seed cake out of the oven.
PYLON (S6:E1)
DAMIAN: I was disappointed it wasn’t a rather large Raspberry Royale! Are you yourself fond of seed cake?
JAMES: I have to confess, I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten seed cake. I am quite partial to date and apple flapjack. And Raspberry Royale is always a winner!
DAMIAN: And what about a Whisky Mac?
JAMES: I’ve been teetotal for years, but I’m sure Max enjoys a tipple, Whisky Mac, a few bottles of wine over meals, and gin and tonics down the pub.
DAMIAN: I’ve been asking Russ why we can’t see more of the good doctor’s home and personal life for years, so, like me, you must have been delighted to see Max’s house in the script?
JAMES: Oh yes, I was!
DAMIAN: And albeit only his doorstep and garden thus far, is it how you imagined Max’s home to be?
JAMES: I always had an idea that Max lived somewhere peaceful and aesthetically pleasing, that offered sanctuary, so when I saw the cottage and the beautiful location, I thought it was just wonderful.
EXT. GARDEN/MAX’S HOUSE – DAY
A trug and a kneeler by well-tended flowerneds. Birdsong and the hum of drowsy bees. ENDEAVOUR amidst the floribunda – a long drink in hand. MAX comes out bearing a freshly baked seed cake, which he pops on the table.
MAX: Have to give it half an hour to cool. Well – this is a first. (re: drinks) Splash more?
ENDEAVOUR returns to table – MAX knocks up a Whisky Mac – scotch and ginger wine over ice.
ENDEAVOUR: Been here long?
MAX: Eight years? Yes. Eight years. Don’t know what I’d do without it, to be honest. How d’you know where I live, by the way?
ENDEAVOUR: You’re in the book. (re: the house and garden) Nice.
MAX: I’m fighting a war of attrition with the greenfly over the tea-roses. Not very successfully, it must be said. But, yes – as a spot I’m rather fond. (a moment)Something has to be lovely, doesn’t it?
DAMIAN: Don’t you think that both the passion for baking and his love of gardening was a great insight into how Max manages to keep his work and personal life at a safe distance?
JAMES: I loved playing those scenes. They were written so beautifully, and I think the niceties that Max has cultivated in his home life are encapsulated in that line, ’Something has to be lovely, doesn’t it?’
DAMIAN: Later in the scene, Max says that ‘I shan’t flatter myself it’s altogether a social call…’ and as we discussed in our first interview, Max and Endeavour have much more in common with each other than many of his other associates and are both on the same cultural and intellectual wavelength. So, isn’t it a pity they don’t socialise more and why do you think that is?
JAMES: I am sure work permitting, they do socialise. And more so, as they get to know each other over the years. It would be nice to see them enjoying a few drinks and a chat down the pub.
DAMIAN: The following is the how the scene originally ended in the script but was unfortunately cut:
ENDEAVOUR takes his leave…
ENDEAVOUR: Thanks.
MAX: Any time. (a moment) Look, I’ve got to ask. What are you doing? Stuck out in the middle of nowhere?
ENDEAVOUR: Minding my business, mostly.
MAX: Are you? It was a bad go with George Fancy. Bad for everyone. The break up of Cowley on top of it. (off Endeavour) Somebody’s got to rally the troops.
ENDEAVOUR: But not me. Not me. Not this time. So, don’t ask.
MAX: They’re broken, Morse. I can put bodies back together again – but hearts..?
ENDEAVOUR: There’s not enough vinegar and brown paper left, Max. Not to fix us both. I can’t do it.
MAX: Then all really is lost.
DAMIAN: I asked Russ about this scene and he told me he thought of Max as acting as Jiminy Cricket to Endeavour’s little wooden boy. What are your thoughts on this and do you, like the other members of the principal cast that I’ve interviewed, find it frustrating that many precious scenes with so much insight are often cut?
JAMES: Jiminy Cricket? I like that!! Yes, I do remember that scene and I thought there was a lovely poignancy in those lines. It’s a shame it was cut but there are always going to be limitations with screen time, and storyline takes priority. You can’t take it personally, its all part of the process.
DAMIAN: And speaking of scenes getting cut – shall we dance?
INT. MORTUARY – NIGHT 5
MAX working – swabbing down the slab. Humming a happy hum. Footsteps off – JAGO together with GOG and MAGOG [McGyffin’s heavies] – who are in poor CID mufti.
JAGO: Evening, Doc. Got a request from the Yard to transfer this Binks body to London.
MAX: Hollis Binks?
JAGO: That’s him, aye.
MAX: I assume you’ve got your Home Office 127 (b) chitty – which authorises transfer from my keeping.
JAGO: Oh, yeh, Doc.
MAX: In triplicate and counter-signed by a magistrate?
JAGO: It’s all in order. (the penny drops) There is no 127 (b) chitty, is there? Doesn’t exist.
MAX: Alas. (a nod to GOG and MAGOG’s footwear) And if those muddy boots have ever seen Hendon, then I’m Carmen Miranda.
MAX takes up a blade from his tray.
MAX: (CONT’D) What does exist, however, is a Number Four scalpel and a lifetime’s experience of wielding it. So. Shall we dance?
DEGUELLO (S6:E4)
DAMIAN: It’s such a shame that this was cut because I would have loved to have seen Max “dance”.
JAMES: Yes, I remember that scene, I thought Richard Riddell was terrific as DS Jago, he brought a real menace to that role, so I was looking forward to squaring up to him in the mortuary. I remember there were a few changes on that script, and sadly it was cut before we started shooting.
DAMIAN: Again though, isn’t it scenes like this that reveal different layers to your character as I never would imagine Max to be quite so brave as to stand up to three bad guys?
JAMES: Oh, I don’t know about that, I think that underneath that sanguine exterior there is real moral fibre and a very steely resolve. His job requires a strength of character, and I don’t think Max would go down without a fight.
INT. MAX’S CLUB – DAY
MAX waiting. BRIGHT makes his way through the crowd. MAX stands to greet him.
MAX: Chief Superintendent.
BRIGHT: Doctor. It’s very good of you to meet me.
MAX: Not at all. What may I get for you?
BRIGHT: Oh – er… A brandy, I think.
MAX attracts the attention of a passing waiter.
MAX: Albert. A brandy, if you would.
WAITER heads off.
MAX: (CONT’D) They do quite a decent spot of supper.
BRIGHT: Excellent. Excellent. I’m sure.
MAX: Now – how may I be of service?
BRIGHT: I may rely on your discretion. As a medical man.
MAX: Always. Please. Speak freely.
BRIGHT: My wife has been diagnosed with cancer of the lungs. Inoperable, according to the specialist. She’s scolded me for an optimistic fool, but I wonder if you might recommend anyone from whom one could seek… a second opinion.
MAX: Well, there’s no better man in England than Sir Julian Fitzalan. I know him slightly and would be happy… (off BRIGHT’S reaction) Chief Superintendent?
BRIGHT: Julian is my wife’s specialist…
CONFECTION (S6:E3)
DAMIAN: I think this is one of my favourite scenes from the last or any series; written and performed to perfection.
JAMES: I’m so glad you enjoyed that scene, I thought it was beautifully written too, and working with Anton was a delight. Not only is he kind, witty, and wise, he has a wonderful generosity of spirit, which I think is priceless for an actor. And Leanne Welham directed that scene with such sensitivity. When you have days like that, you learn so much, and it really is an absolute privilege.
DAMIAN: The audience can infer that he doesn’t socialise with Bright any more than he does with Endeavour. Has Max got any friends to go out with?
JAMES: I am sure he has a varied social life, I imagine he plays Bridge and goes to concerts but as for real friendships, they are few in number. I imagine he would enjoy a platonic friendship with Dorothea, I could see them making regular trips to the Oxford Playhouse and enjoying saucy jokes and several large gins in the pub.
DAMIAN: You said in our first interview that ‘there is an eccentricity to Max, and a flamboyant persona, which is probably a useful device for steering clear of emotional attachments’. Would you say this extends to, and excludes, any sort of love life?
JAMES: Yes, I think so. There is no mention of a romantic partner and he lives alone. There was a scene in a previous film where Max was asked about the possibility of a recently discovered fatality being suicide, and I remember Max’s line, ‘Love’s very popular. The want of it. A broken heart.’ There was a lovely quote from Housman, and there was a real poignancy to that scene. I wondered instinctively if Max had perhaps had a brief love affair a few years previously which had ended unhappily.
ENDEAVOUR: Twenty-seven. What a waste.
MAX: Oh, he’ll have had his reasons, I expect. Love’s very popular. The want of it. A broken-heart.
MAX zips the remains into a rubber shroud — nods the MORTUARY MEN to cart the body off on a stretcher.
ENDEAVOUR: Where do you stand with all that?
MAX: Suicide?
ENDEAVOUR: Love.
MAX: Early in the day for metaphysics, isn’t it?
MAX holds ENDEAVOUR’s gaze a life-time long.
ENDEAVOUR: I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.
ENDEAVOUR looks upstream – embarrassed. MAX’s eye is set on some far distant country where falls not hail…
MAX: ‘And one was fond of me: and all are slain.’
ENDEAVOUR’s tongue – never far from Housman – finds the closing line.
ENDEAVOUR: ‘Ask me no more, for fear I should reply.’
MAX – a wry smile.
GAME (S4:E1)
DAMIAN: You also mentioned that both you and Colin Dexter hail from Stamford in Lincolnshire and you later discovered that there was a surgeon operating at Stamford Hospital around the 1950s named Doctor Du Bruyn. Did you ever find out more about him and if he was the inspiration for Max?
JAMES: I found out quite bit of information about Doctor Du Bruyn. Apparently Max was based on him and also a consultant who worked in Peterborough. As I mentioned before, Doctor Du Bruyn was very well known in Stamford, and those who remember him, say he was much respected and well liked. I even have a photo of him in a book called Stamford Memories.
DAMIAN: And finally, do you still learn lines in your local cemetery?
JAMES: Of course! Preparation is everything in the acting game, so as soon as the script comes in, I’m straight down to that cemetery and learning the lines.
DAMIAN: James, thank you very much indeed.
JAMES: Thanks Damian.
NOTE TO THE READER: James told me during our first interview that he treated himself to a nice pudding from Marks and Spencer when he landed the part of Max. Curious ever since, James finally revealed to me at the previous Endeavour unit base that the pudding was a rather large Raspberry Royale!
BRIGHT: When I arrived here three years ago, I had such high hopes. What an ignominious end I have led you to. I shall resign, of course.
THURSDAY: Sir…
BRIGHT: I failed him. I failed my men. The station gone. My brightest and best cast to the four winds. And all is brought to ruin.
Cometh the hour. The one true friend…
STRANGE: Bollocks to that.
THURSDAY: Sergeant…
STRANGE: No, sir. I won’t hear it. We might be down, but we’re not out. Not yet. Not by a long chalk. I’ll be damned if this is how it ends. We’ll have justice for him, sir. Whatever it takes.
THURSDAY: Jim’s right, sir. They can call us Thames Valley till the cows come home, but wherever we wash up, we’re City men – each one of us. To our boots. To the last.
BRIGHT: So few.
ENDEAVOUR: Enough to give him justice.
THURSDAY: We’ll find the bastard, sir.
BRIGHT: Your word on it.
THURSDAY: My oath.
STRANGE: And mine.
They look to ENDEAVOUR
ENDEAVOUR: For George
ICARUS (S5:E6)
DAMIAN: Pretty rousing stuff but I never quite understood what Russ meant by ‘Cometh the hour. The onetrue friend…’ when I first read the script and why Strange was the one true friend but, of course, I certainly do now. Endeavour was almost impotent with denial and Thursday spent most of the last series edging slowly towards the dark side. So, not only was Strange the one true friend, but to what extent might he also be described as the one true hero of series 6?
SEAN: He certainly stepped up to the plate. He’d be extremely red faced at being described as a hero though.
Double doors give on to a narrow vestibule/hall – a hard bench against a wall. Facing the open doors – a drop-leaf counter beyond which, the suggestion of a back room, from whence OPERATIC MUSIC floods the building.
ANGLE – SERVICE BELL on the counter. Beyond – out of focus – a UNIFORM sits with his back towards us, typing at a desk.
A hand comes down on the Service bell.
VISTOR (Off-screen): Shop!
UNIFORM rises – comes to the counter, and we recognise – ENDEAVOUR in full Thames Valley blues – three stripes on his sleeve. And sporting a moustache. His visitor – STRANGE – a touch of Brylcreem. Three-piece suit. Chelsea Boots.
STRANGE: This is where you’ve been keeping yourself, is it?
ENDEAVOUR’S not going to make this easy. A distance has fallen between them. Things unsaid, and for too long.
PYLON (S6:E1)
DAMIAN: Brylcreem, three-piece suit and Chelsea boots! – whatever happened to those rather fetching tank-tops?
SEAN: Being a style icon requires constant innovation and evolution. Strange and I have shown the world the many faces of the humble tank-top. It was time to move on!
STRANGE: We’re still no nearer to finding who did for George.
ENDEAVOUR: ‘We’? I’m here. You’re there. He’s [Thursday] at Castle Gate. Mister Bright at Traffic. There isn’t a we – not any more – nor likely to be.
STRANGE: We said…
ENDEAVOUR: You said. I don’t blame you. Heat of the moment. Like the last day of school. Solemn oaths and giddy declarations. ‘We happy few…’
STRANGE: I meant it.
ENDEAVOUR: I’m sure. But that’s not how it turned out. It’s never how these things turn out.
WIDE – two old friends, coffee table between them – the width of an ocean.
PYLON (S6:E1)
DAMIAN: I thought these and similar scenes in PYLON and throughout series 6 were beautifully written and, indeed, performed. He might not be as smart as Endeavour, but there’s no one more loyal and dependable when the chips are down than our Strange. Not only is he appalled by Endeavour’s attitude, but isn’t Strange also a little confused by it as well?
SEAN: The shock, and it was an extreme shock let us not forget, has affected them very differently. They are both grieving. Strange is using it as fuel whilst Morse uses it to build a wall around himself. It’s definitely confusing.
DAMIAN: Despite this, Strange continues to help Endeavour and even lies to ACC Bottoms towards the end of the film telling him that Endeavour belongs to one of the College Lodges in order to secure the transfer to Castle Gate. Why exactly does he do this; is it purely out of friendship or did he think Endeavour is more likely to pursue the truth about Fancy’s death if he’s stationed there?
SEAN: Six of one, half a dozen of the other. A less isolated Morse could prove to be more malleable.
DAMIAN: Also in PYLON, Endeavour pleads, ‘Look, you’re doing alright. Friends at the Lodge. Going places. You’re on the up. Just let it go.’ but Strange replies with ‘I can’t. I can’t’. Seemingly more than anyone else, why do you think Strange is so haunted by Fancy’s death?
SEAN: First and foremost, Strange cared for George. They were friends. For there to be no justice, no closure, is simply unbearable. His only way to emotionally deal with it is to make sure the culprit pays for what they did.
ENDEAVOUR: Who else knows about this?
STRANGE: So far – just us.
BRIGHT: Dr.deBryn was good enough to notify me and Detective Sergeant Strange first. I think – for the moment at least – such information should be contained amongst former City officers.
ENDEAVOUR: We’re a man shy, then. Aren’t we?
Awkward looks from BRIGHT and STRANGE.
DEGUELLO (S6:E4)
DAMIAN: Albeit only temporarily, do you think the moral downfall of Thursday suggests that all bets are off now and anything is possible for the future of the show – I mean, is there a real sense of not knowing what to expect when you read the scripts for the first time?
SEAN: I think that has always been the case. Narratively, stylistically and tonally the show has always been quite daring. Thursday’s journey is certainly an example of that. Russ has written real people. Real people do unexpected things. I’m always excited to open up a new script and see what trouble everyone has been getting into.
ENDEAVOUR: I met someone. She’s got a kid. A boy. Five years old. It could be – I don’t know – something. (off STRANGE) Why not? Everybody else gets a shot – why should I be any different?
STRANGE: Because you are.
ENDEAVOUR: What if I don’t want to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about? Something to come home to.
STRANGE: I wouldn’t know. Some day. Maybe.
CONFECTION (S6:E3)
DAMIAN: I thought the characters of Bright and Strange really evolved in series 6 but I wonder if, considering we’re now well into the third and final act of Endeavour, if there’s anything you’d like to explore with Strange before the curtain falls – perhaps get a girlfriend considering he hasn’t been on a proper date since 1966?
SEAN: I’d like to see more of Strange the leader. The authority figure. Too busy for dates!
DAMIAN: I thought the series got a lot darker as it grew towards the end of the decade. Indeed, the fun and playfulness of scenes such as Strange playing the trombone and becoming one half of the odd couple when he shared a flat with Endeavour seem to be sadly long gone. Do you miss these aspects of Strange’s character from the good old days?
SEAN: I feel they are still a part of his character, just below the surface. I imagine the trombone is kept under his desk. For emergencies.
STRANGE: Back to the day-job, then. That was quite nice while it lasted. Bit like the good old days.
ENDEAVOUR: Which were they? Remind me.
PYLON (S6:E1)
DAMIAN: You told me in our first interview, ‘I’d like to think that Strange in the 1960s is very much trying to find himself. He is very sure of where he wants to go in the world but is still unsure of his footing within it.’ How do you see Strange in the 1970s?
SEAN: Harder. Tougher. Self assured. He’s his own man now.
INT. VENDING MACHINE AREA/NEW COWLEY POLICE STATION
BRIGHT at his solitary repast – nosing through a newspaper with an APOLLO HEADLINE. THURSDAY arrives.
THURSDAY: Giving the canteen a miss today, sir?
BRIGHT: I was just… uh… (re the Apollo headline) Extraordinary thing.
THURSDAY: Yes, it is. Hell of a thing. Brave as you like. I was a boy when Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic. Everybody said that couldn’t be done. Fifty years on, and it’s the moon.
BRIGHT: ‘Man’s reach’, Thursday.
DAMIAN: Russ, what do you remember of July 1969?
RUSS: My chief recollection is peering at a black and white TV and trying to make sense of the images thereon. Was the touchdown beamed back live – or is my mind playing tricks? The pictures were quite difficult to process for my young mind. Quite abstract. Oblique views of the lunar surface.
But there was a great air of excitement about it all. My maternal grandmother was as old as the century, and it’s mad to think her life encompassed both the Wright Brothers first powered flight, and then – sixty-six years later – she was still alive to watch men walk on the moon. Quite staggering. Having seen Alan Tracy do his thing in Thunderbird 3, one might have been a bit blasé about it, assuming that – ‘well, of course, the moon is nothing special. Thunderbird 3 goes there all the time.’
E/I. THE MOON/SOUNDSTAGE/HEAVISIDE STUDIOS
The surface of the moon. Pockmarked with craters. Buzz Aldrin’s ‘Magnificent desolation.’ The blast of deceleration rockets – and a spaceship descends to the surface.
The space-ship crashes in a tremendous explosion… A moment – and a couple of STAGEHANDS enter frame with fire extinguishers to put out the flames… WIDE – and we see the MOON is a model set.
DAMIAN: The second film of series 6, APOLLO, was something of a love letter to Gerry Anderson and the Supermarionation style of filmmaking. Can you tell me what shows like Thunderbirds and Stingray meant to you as a child?
RUSS: I guess, along with the films of Ray Harryhausen, they furnished my imagination. I would have watched them in black and white, I suppose – first time round. Like most of the country, not having a colour TV. But, yes, I was completely in thrall to the worlds created in each of those shows.
DAMIAN: Also, some of the puppets such as Lady Penelope and Marina were strangely alluring to young boys weren’t they?
RUSS: Marina, perhaps. Lady Penelope… not so much. As a child I found her rhotacism a bit off-putting. I was fascinated by the imagery in the end credits of Stingray – across the “Marina” theme. Exquisitely shot. These felt like images that could have come from a big budget, high production value movie. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but the mood and imagery for Pulp’s Hardcore video has been a bit of a touchstone across the last couple of Series — which in turn took its inspiration from a coffee table book called Still Life edited by Diane Keaton (yup!) and Marvin Heiferman. I’ve got a pretty battered copy, but it’s filled with stills and publicity shots from Hollywood movies between 1940 and ‘69. There’s something very strange and staged about those shots – oddly lifeless and artificial — and often sinister, in a kind of David Lynch/Twin Peaks way. There’s something about the kind of world that they’re trying to depict which rings utterly hollow. They’re what the mind of someone who has lived an unsophisticated life imagines the sophisticated life to be. Do you know what I mean? It’s like what children imagine a King’s life to be. Ice cream for breakfast, lunch and supper, delivered on silver salvers by periwigged flunkies in buckled shoes – illustrated by Quentin Blake.
And… this does get back to Marina and Lady Penelope, I promise you… In the UK, there was that same brittle Soho glamour abroad after the war. Telephone accents. Ruth Ellis. It’s there in Betjeman’s Song of a Nightclub Proprietress — that piss elegance that pretends to something it isn’t. Del Boy Trotter’s ‘Bonnet de douche’. That’s probably a bit unfair on Del Boy – but Hyacinth Bucket is close to the mark. And I think that’s certainly true of Lady Penelope. It’s a suburban imagining of the aristocracy. Ha! You remember that scene with Jane Fonda in Klute where she goes and monologues the fantasy of the old gentleman in the Garment Factory. He’s come from the old country, and the fantasy is all about Fonda’s trip to the gambling tables of Monte Carlo, it’s all dripping with Euro decadence and the ‘pagan’ feelings stirred in her by some older man in the casino. And it’s a fantastic scene – but again, it’s that level of pretence. It’s no accident Lady Penelope ends up in Monte in The Man from MI.5. And that’s there in the Marina montage as well. Candles melting in a Chianti bottle. A vision of glamour that most of us could only dream about in the UK. But it was bogus. Ersatz. Rank Charm – as they say.
DAMIAN: You visited filming at Twickenham studios for a couple of days and I believe the first was with Shaun directing the human actors. You’ve obviously known Shaun for a long time now but what he is like as a director?
RUSS: Thorough. Prepared.
DAMIAN: Did the two of you have any significant creative differences on this film?
RUSS: Not that I recall, specifically. But what goes on tour…
DAMIAN: Shaun’s first foray into directing was a couple of years ago now, do you think he always had ambitions to direct an episode of Endeavour and why do you think he wanted to direct this particular film?
RUSS: Well – he didn’t want to open the batting – first time out, and the only film available to him to direct was the second in the run.
DAMIAN: Have you ever thought of having a go behind the camera?
RUSS: I’m already insufferable enough.
DAMIAN: Not you, sir. The second day of filming at Twickenham involved the puppet sequences. Now, I’ve often tried to get you to pick a favourite child and you always refuse. However, you must have something of a special soft spot for this film?
RUSS: I enjoyed the puppets very much. Getting up close and personal with Stephen La Rivière’s wonders. His team is fantastic, and I could happily spend the rest of my days doing nothing but working with them. What I adored was that it took me back to making my own 8mm stop-motion films as a kid. Then – Action Men were my cast, brilliantly poseable for animation – but it was in essence ‘bringing one’s toys to life.’ And there was an element of that with the puppets and the vehicles. Obviously, compared to the budget they’d had on the commercials they’d done, we could offer nothing like the same resources — but, clearly, when they’d been doing their Thunderbirds at 50 films, I don’t think they were awash with money, which brings me to my point — they have retained a very healthy sense of make do and mend, and most importantly, the only thing that matters is what’s in the frame. Does it tick all the rules boxes? No. Does it work? Does it look fantastic? Absolutely. That chimed very happily with my approach to making things. I adore sleight of hand. The movie and TV magic. What you thought you saw, you did not see.
He and they have such a genuine reverence for the original way of doing things, and a touching affection for those who broke that ground first time around… Having David Elliot and Mary Turner on the floor – and seeing Mary manipulating the puppets from the ‘Bridge’ over the set, as she had done for Anderson nearly sixty years ago… For those of us to whom such a moment might mean something… It was extraordinarily moving.
DAMIAN: Is this why you chose this film to make your first and only onscreen appearance?
RUSS: First do no harm. It was Stephen’s idea. And it kind of fed back into the make do and mend approach. At first, I think, we’d built the cut to the human hand into the story – and explained it in dialogue as part of the plot. There was a lot more about guns and blanks and live rounds early on, as a way of explaining why more than one person would have tested positive for firearms residue. But there we are. I was always very conscious as a kid of the cut to the live human hand pulling a lever or pushing a switch – and I think I wrote about that in the stage directions. Geraldine – Stephen’s colleague at Century 21 Films – had an offcut of material left over from Renton and Crater’s costumes – literally, a fragment of cloth, perhaps with a bit of braiding, was it? – and I was sewn into that to create a bit of cuff. Just enough to deceive. The ONLY thing that matters is what’s in frame. And away I went. A career in hand modelling beckons… And not a moment too soon.
DAMIAN: Can you describe the atmosphere on set with Stephen La Rivière and Century 21 working their magic?
RUSS: Well, as I think I’ve mentioned, it meant a lot. To be on the floor with Stephen and his team, and of course David and Mary. Really was amongst the happiest days I’ve spent on the show. That the shoot took place during the heatwave merely added to the fun of it. The studio – with the lights blazing – was stifling. We were the Alec Guinness Bridge on the River Kwai ‘Sweatbox’ Re-Enactment Society. As the late, great Neil Innes said when I saw him play at the Marquee some forty years ago, ‘The sweat’s running down the cheeks of my arse like juice from a rhubarb tart.’ But if I could spend the rest of my days doing that… it would be no contest.
DAMIAN: You mention Barry Gray’s music in the script and his contribution to the Anderson productions can’t be overstated. Any particular favourite themes or songs?
RUSS: Stingray is sensational. And I’m very fond of Joe 90. The organ line is marvellous. I also like the vocal version of Captain Scarlet by The Spectrum – who supposedly performed it (or mimed to it) on The Golden Shot. I’d love to know if there was any truth in that. The vocalist to my ear always sounds like Ray Brooks – who narrated Mister Benn. Marina is a stone cold classic. The mighty Thunderbirds theme. But with a lot of these, it’s the incidental music that haunts the mind. Some of the stuff on The Uninvited – the strange Thunderbirds story set around a pyramid. Madly, I always feel like I catch echoes of it in some of the arrangements in The Specials early work — Ghost Town in particular – those brass stabs, and the flute figure always sound very Thunderbirds to my ears. Barry Gray’s music did so much of the heavy lifting in terms of mood and scene setting. In much the same way that our own Barry – and now, of course, Matt Slater – bring so much to Endeavour. Their music has saved our blushed more times than I can remember.
DAMIAN: Was it the idea to incorporate the Apollo 11 moon landing or the Supermarionation aspects of the story that came first?
RUSS: Oh – the Moon Landing. It would have been a natural exit point for the series as a whole – as the pinnacle of human achievement.
INT. SOUNDSTAGE/HEAVISIDE STUDIOS
A puppet Moonbase. Consoles with winking lights. The HERO of MOON RANGERS – square jawed MAJOR.ROCK RENTON in a scene with X1 the ANDROID (a ROBOT), LUNARA – one of the Moon People; and COLONEL CRATER, crusty old patriarch.
COLONEL CRATER: Barbara’s not only my daughter, Major, but she’s also a renowned Astro-Physicist in her own right.
MAJOR RENTON: I warned her not to go, Colonel. Now, she’s out there somewhere on the dark side, with only thirty minutes of oxygen left.
COLONEL CRATER: Don’t blame yourself, Rock. She was determined to get that space-flu vaccine through to the miners at Station X19…
DAMIAN: Tell me about creating these characters, the choice of names and if you needed to do much research or does hokey dialogue just come naturally?
RUSS: They were kind of Stingray-ish, really, weren’t they? Alliterative for Troy Tempest/Rock Renton. The name Renton had stuck in my head for fifty years — I think there was a character called Rod Renton in either Secret of Zarb or The Terror of Tiba – these little books I had when I was a kid. Spitfire Books. I’m not sure if they were for younger readers or just pulpy – but they were all genres… cowboy, war, adventure… and the pair in question were sort of secret agenty. The kind of story where each of the buddy-buddy heroes had alliterative names.
DAMIAN: Note the book logo – Tigers were everywhere in the 60s.RUSS: I think the chap in the fez and robes on the cover fed into stage directions for supporting artists at Bixby’s party in RIDE. We just added the horse-hair fly-swatter. A shilling! Money well spent.
And Crater was a version of Commander Shore from Stingray. What we were reaching for with Moon Rangers though was a show that had already passed its sell-by date. Anderson had moved away – with Captain Scarlet – from the larger headed marionettes of the earlier productions to more properly proportioned puppets. And it was important for us that our studio – Heaviside – was still flying the old flag – that it was slipping behind the times. I know Stephen La Rivière has much greater affection for the Stingray/Thunderbirds era puppets. And I do see his point. While Scarlet and Joe 90 were much more realistically proportioned, it was at a cost of what could be done. The puppets in those two shows ‘walk’ or move far less than those in Thunderbirds and Stingray. You’ve got Lieutenant Green on his slidey chair – and Colonel White behind his rotating desk. They’re much more static. It’s a choice. You feel the later shows, including The Secret Service from 69 – which was half live action, half puppetry – were consciously trying to shake off their origins. I liked the darkness of Scarlet a lot, and I’d dearly love to find a way to deliver a version of it — but the artistry and scale of Stingray, together with the hopeful message of Thunderbirds, really makes them the yardstick, and what people tend to think of when they think of Century 21. The particular gait of the puppets, which has been providing comedians with much mileage for over half a century. News recently came through of the death of Alan Patillo at the age of 90. Writer and director for many of Anderson’s shows – his work was quite remarkable. In tribute, Stephen tweeted a link to the climax of The Perils of Penelope. Really — it’s a masterclass in suspense. Absolutely brilliant. A sequence of which Hitchcock or Spielberg would be proud.
DAMIAN: Jeff Slayton, CEO of the fictional Heaviside studios, describes Moon Rangers as a sort of ‘Bonanza in space’ which, of course, reminded me of Star Trek. Now, you often mention the Prime Directive whenever I ask a question regarding Endeavour’s past – typically with reference to Susan Fallon. I obviously understand that the Prime Directive in Star Trek means that Starfleet personnel are forbidden from interfering with the natural development of alien civilisations but can you clarify what is meant when you use it in reference to the Morse universe?
RUSS: It’s [also] Doc Brown’s warning to Marty, isn’t it? We can’t do anything in the past which might change the future.
DAMIAN: Will Susan Fallon ever appear in Endeavour?
RUSS: Well, she sort of already has. She is standing in the group of mourners at her father’s funeral. We just didn’t pick her out or have her see Endeavour, as it felt that might undermine what they have to say to each other in Dead on Time.
LAZARETTO (S4:E3)
DAMIAN: Of course, APOLLO wasn’t all puppets and explosions, and although we’ll discuss some of the key moments regarding Endeavour and Thursday when we conclude our discussion on the themes of alienation, change, guilt and paranoia next time, I wanted to highlight two of my favourite scenes in this script. The first continues from where we began earlier at the vending machine:
THURSDAY: All well, sir?
BRIGHT: A sobering thing to discover so late in life that one is considered a fool.
THURSDAY: Not you, sir.
BRIGHT: Oh, yes. I’m under no illusion. I am a figure of ridicule. To be openly mocked and scorned. (off THURSDAY) This Pelican! — is an albatross around my neck. Someone even mentioned it to Mrs.Bright at Canasta the other evening. People laugh at me behind my back, and even to my face.
THURSDAY: More fool them. Seems to me we’re in the business of keeping the Queen’s Peace and preserving life and limb. This campaign of yours – you’ll probably never know how many lives you’ve saved. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe – by the time it’s done.
BRIGHT: I’ve always been able to rely on you. Well — I must meet a representation from the Oxford traders. Up in arms over parking restrictions.
BRIGHT goes. THURSDAY watches after him.
DAMIAN: Wonderfully played by both actors but Anton’s pause after ‘I’ve always been able to rely on you’ and the poignant look on his face was so moving and beautiful. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but this is the sort of scene, maybe because it doesn’t involve Endeavour or drive the mystery plot forward, that might easily have been deleted in the earlier days of the show. However, I’m confused as to why the following brilliant “best not go there…” scene which does feature Endeavour was not filmed in its entirety and much of the really insightful dialogue not included. Was this simply because of our old enemy screentime or a creative difference perhaps?
INT. CID/NEW COWLEY POLICE STATION
THURSDAY and BOX in BOX’s office. ENDEAVOUR and JOAN keeping an eye on FLORA and MATTHEW — sister helping her brother with his drawing on a blotter. JOAN at the window – eye on the glimpse of moon in the darkened sky.
JOAN: Mad to think there’s people up there. Right now. That someone could have looked out of the window like this and thought – ‘Right. We’re going there.’
ENDEAVOUR: “This was the prized, the desirable sight…” (off JOAN) Sorry. Being clever again. It’s always occupied the human imagination. Understandable, I suppose. But strange, all the same.
JOAN: Strange?
ENDEAVOUR: That something so far away and seemingly out of reach could bear so great an influence on one’s life. Even when you can’t see it. It’s still there. (best not go there…)
RUSS: It was shot. Shaun didn’t care for it and asked me to write another scene – which is the one that was broadcast.
DAMIAN: Finally, what can you tell us about tonight’s film, RAGA?
RUSS: The 1970 General Election is a backdrop. All in Wrestling has a part to play. Greeks Bearing Gifts had a notional influence upon it. It features an Indian restaurant, so probably best avoided by those who bleat about ‘Political correctness gone mad.’
DAMIAN: Just one more thing; you’re having tea with a friend and there are two cakes left on the plate – a large one of a kind you very much like, and a smaller, dry looking one. Which do you choose?
