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THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2023: RUSSELL LEWIS PART III

Drinks at the Randolph

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Dr. Daniel Cronyn, FUGUE (S1:E2)

‘Hold on tightly, let go lightly.’

~ The final exclusive Endeavour interview with Russell Lewis ~

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

-TERMINUS (S8:E3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the covers that fired and furnished young Russ’ imagination (see previous interview)

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

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

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY seeing DOROTHEA out…

THURSDAY: Thanks for coming.

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

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

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

WIN: Who’s this for? Morse?

(off THURSDAY)

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

JOAN: Mum, don’t say that.

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

JOAN – stabbed to the heart.

JOAN: Don’t. Please…

THURSDAY: What does that mean?

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

JOAN: No.

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

(to THURSDAY)

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

And with that WIN heads off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOAN: I know.

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

CUT TO:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOAN: opens the door to STRANGE.

JOAN: Jim?

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

(he smiles)

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

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

JOAN: I’m sorry, I just…

JOAN covers her face and breaks down.

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

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

And he has.

CUT TO:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The monumental privilege of it. My God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it. And that’s all.

We made a hat where there never was a hat.

Who could hope to do more?

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

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

DAMIAN: To the end…

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

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

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

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2023: RUSSELL LEWIS PART II

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2021: RUSSELL LEWIS PART III

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An exclusive interview with the writer and executive producer of Endeavour

DAMIAN: A dark, cloudy sky replete with full moon, a moody and misty canal and various other eerie shots. We’re back to where we began series seven with a bit of boo!!! Back in the day, when we were both still in shorts, you’d often refer to the assortment of genres – or at least different styles – of Endeavour episodes within a series as a selection box of chocolates. Given that you only had three episodes to play with, do you regret not having the space to offer more of a variety of “flavours” and would you ideally have preferred to have had some more space between the similar horror elements of both ORACLE (S7:E1) and ZENANA (S7:E3)?

RUSS: Well — I’d always have far sooner have had four or more films — but three is what Shaun and Rog were prepared to do, so you cut according to your cloth. It also dictated to a degree the shape of the thing. Three was a very new shape for us. We wanted a bit of a triptych.

DR BYRNE: Admit men into our women’s college, you would invite the wolf inside the citadel. We cannot underestimate this. The barbarian is at the gate! Within this college we are safe, we are free. Beyond the pale, we are neither of these things. We are prey.

DAMIAN: ‘Inviting the wolf’ and women as ‘prey’. You’ll no doubt be familiar with Angela Carter and her feminist reworkings of classic fairy tales with gothic horror elements such as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. Was it your intention to use the imagery of the wolf as a predator in a similar way?

RUSS: Yeh — I’d thought we’d not ‘done a scary’ in the previous series, and this was an attempt to fold some of that into 1970. To go full Hammer gothic. I think there was as much a nod to vampirism as lycanthropy to begin with. A lot more Grand Guignol. But not everyone shares my enthusiasm for such things. So… The majority of that fell away in shooting the opener.

DAMIAN: And you must have seen the wonderful The Company of Wolves (1984)?

RUSS: I saw it at the pictures when it came out — because I’m very old. Extraordinary looking picture.

‘The Company of Wolves’ adapted by Angela Carter based on her short story of the same name.

DAMIAN: After the opening montage we cut to another female victim of the Towpath Killer and Max makes the following observations while examining the body: ‘Broken neck. There are wounds adjacent to the jugular. Bruising at the trauma site suggests the attacker sucked, or attempted to suck her blood.’ Thursday somewhat sneeringly asks if they’ve still arrested the right suspect, to which Endeavour tries to reply, ‘It doesn’t mean…’, but Thursday interjects, ‘It means you’re not as smart as you like to give out.’ Obviously the relationship between the two has deteriorated over the years but I was wondering if you think the animosity really began to take root in CODA (S3:E4) with Endeavour disapproving of Thursday beating up the gang associate in the garage?

RUSS: I think it’s cumulative – but yes, I think it’s the first time Endeavour expresses disapproval of Thursday’s methods. It’s the flipside of the avuncular Blue Lamp demeanour that’s been on show since the off. But let’s not forget that he lamped Teddy Samuels in what is now called OVERTURE — albeit with Endeavour out of the room.

BRIGHT: We would have got him a deal sooner if we’d been listened to. Morse meant well, of course, and his record speaks for itself. I’m not suggesting any repercussions for him. Not for a moment, no. But we invested too much faith in his abilities. Backed his instincts too wholeheartedly. We gave him his head. Overindulged him. And he was wrong.

DAMIAN: While the troubles between Thursday and Endeavour may be understandable, Bright has no such quarrels with Endeavour that I can think of – at this early point in the episode at least – so isn’t all this a bit disappointing and harsh of the Chief Superintendent, almost as though he has regressed back to the irascible and incredulous Bright of old that we originally met in GIRL (S1:E1)?

RUSS: I think Bright had troubles of his own at home — and is not fully his best self. Presumably the pressure from Division is considerable — and they’re looking for a scapegoat.

DAMIAN: I asked you at the beginning of these interviews this year how your memory was and you told me ‘unreliable.’ Well, I’m afraid mine is too because you were absolutely right that Mrs Thursday invites Endeavour to Christmas dinner: ‘The children get out a game or two for after the Queen, and Fred has a doze in front of the big film.’ Lovely that, given their age, she still refers to Joan and Sam as children but I was wondering what games they might have played?

RUSS: What are we looking at… 1970? Oh — the John Waddington Songbook, wouldn’t you think? The big two – obviously. And Totopoly, perhaps? Formula One? Risk – which I think then was Parker Brothers? As was Moviemaker – which I liked a lot. Go For Broke arrived in ‘65, so that might’ve been in with a shout. Sorry! In the manner of Grahame Garden on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue — ‘That was my word.’ Or in this case game.

DAMIAN: Was there ever any explanation in any of the drafts of the script for this episode as to why Joan and Sam didn’t visit at Christmas?

RUSS: I honestly can’t recall. I think the idea was that they were in the back room watching TV. We didn’t have Jack or Sara available — so…

DAMIAN: Given he was raised as a Quaker, would Endeavour have celebrated Christmas as a kid?

RUSS: The Quakerism was on his mum’s side — so I suspect he got a bit of traditional Woolworth’s Christmas with his father.

DAMIAN: Another victim of the Towpath Killer victim is called Petra Cornwell. Any relation to Patricia Cornwell, the author of the Scarpetta crime novels and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper – Case Closed?

RUSS: I think it’s one of those instances where Clearance dictated what we could or couldn’t have. It wasn’t intentional. Cornwell from Bernard or Hugh, most likely. And then Clearance probably offered up Petra or Cleopatra or Immelmahey, and so we had Hobson’s Choice.

DAMIAN: Anyway, there’s a wonderful scene where Endeavour and Thursday once again come to blows as they argue over the killer’s MO…

ENDEAVOUR: Let’s not clutch at straws to save our blushes. Three women, one man. It’s the same killer for all. Whoever killed Molly Andrews killed this young woman.
THURSDAY: Oh, yeah? You’d like that to be true, wouldn’t you? Show me up. “The old man’s losing his touch.” Is that it?
ENDEAVOUR: I didn’t say that.
THURSDAY: You didn’t need to. But before you get all high and mighty, let’s not forget you had all this down for Naomi Kane’s killer.
ENDEAVOUR: Yes, I know. But if we’re being honest about it, when it comes to something like this, you’ve never really had that much touch to lose, have you?
THURSDAY: This is what I get, is it? I’ve stuck my neck out for you more than you know.
ENDEAVOUR: Yes, of course you have. Who wouldn’t? I mean, bank robberies, car thieves, yeah, there’s no one better. But if it’s something that demands a little bit of intellect or a little bit of finesse then…
THURSDAY: You arrogant, conceited…
MAX: Gentlemen! You will conduct yourselves with decorum and the solemnity appropriate to this situation or you will find some other place to stand. If you want to carry on like that, you will find yourself another pathologist. Am I understood?
ENDEAVOUR: Max, I’m sorry, I…
MAX: Am I understood? Then we shall say two o’clock.
STRANGE: That’s the face we want to show the world now, is it? Washing out our dirty smalls in front of respected friends and colleagues. God almighty, what’s the matter with you? Well… I hope you’re both pleased with yourselves.

DAMIAN: Lot’s to unpack here but first of all, ‘save our blushes’ or more usually ‘spare my blushes’ is a true Russ-ism, are you aware that you use this phrase a lot – particularly in real life?

RUSS: Work in television long enough and you have a lot of blushes that want sparing.

DAMIAN: It’s a wonderful scene as I say, splendidly dramatic with the sort of dialogue that I imagine all concerned savour delivering with particular delight but also – or at least I found it to be so – really rather endearingly humorous. Wasn’t it beautifully performed when Max tells them off and Endeavour and Thursday look to the ground in shame almost like two naughty school children?

RUSS: When Max loses it, you know you’ve crossed a line.

DAMIAN: And Max and Strange almost appear to be taking the role of parents or school teachers in uttering the sadly cliched but terribly accurate words, ‘Am I understood?’ and ‘I hope you’re pleased with yourselves’. It tickles me that it’s almost as though parents and teachers are on autopilot and simply repeating what their own parents and teachers said to them when they were children. And teachers in particular can’t seem to help themselves by adding ‘abundantly’ to things like ‘do I make myself clear’ even though most young children probably don’t even know what abundantly means.

RUSS: Well — it clearly takes a lot to drive either Max or Strange to take issue with Endeavour and/or Thursday. When you love people, it’s tough to watch them tear each other apart.

DAMIAN: Particularly apparent in this scene, isn’t it astonishing to behold the transition of Strange as we met him in GIRL (S1:E1) and his slow and subtle transformation towards the older Strange of Inspector Morse as played by the wonderful James Grout?

RUSS: All credit to Riggers. He has never put a foot wrong. Such a fine, fine actor. One of the great joys of the job has been watching him unfurl his sail of greatness.

DAMIAN: Do you think that it is precisely because they’re ‘respected friends and colleagues’ that both Strange and Max dared to speak to Endeavour and particularly Thursday like that?

RUSS: Completely. Let’s not forget DEGUELLO (S6:E4). These are men who have taken it to the wire together. Cowley men – first and last. United against a common enemy, they proved themselves undefeatable. But a house divided against itself…

DAMIAN: Thursday spends some quality time with his canaries as he whistles to them – what with this and the Towpath Killer suspects, there’s more whistling in series seven than a Roger Whittaker concert – and the birds chirp back but then a cat walks into the room which prompts him to warn, ‘Get out of it! Before you get my toe up your arse.’ Remembering where he told Win that he was going to keep the birds and many other utterances throughout the years, Thursday seems to have a fixation with bottoms! Anyway, first of all, when did the Thursdays get a cat?

RUSS: Not theirs. Cats have a habit of wandering in from the garden. Arse and particularly arseholes seem to have had great currency with those who had served in the war. Was it Milligan, I read about — one of that group of comedians and entertainers that’d come through the war, anyway — saying that all you needed to be a big hit with an audience of soldiers at a concert party was to come on stage and say ‘arseholes’.

You’ll remember the serviceman’s lyric to Colonel Bogey’s March was ‘Arseholes! And the same to you!’

DAMIAN: And secondly, was this a play on the predator and prey theme again as it was intercut with the scene where Endeavour talks to Jenny Tate about her dreams and visions?

RUSS: Cat and canary.

DAMIAN: After he sees the copious crucifixes, Bible pages and the black painted silhouette of a wolf on the walls of her home, Endeavour is listening to Jenny tell him about her childhood including the memory of playing hide and seek with her cousin who had a particular fondness for necks, ‘He’d hold you down and pin a big, fat, wet raspberry on your neck. Making out it was all a big joke and a game’ and that she hid in her aunt’s wardrobe once, ‘all fur coats and that. Stoles, you call them? Things made out to look like foxes or some other animal. Their paws hanging down and glass eyes on wire. There was this handbag smell, all stale. Perfume and lipstick and old sweets, all mixed up with mints and cigarettes.’ You often say it’s funny the things that you remember and I continue to be fascinated with the way in which you skilfully interweave your own personal memories with twists on popular culture to create such evocative and resonate dramatic sequences.

The game of hide and seek in a wardrobe filled with fur coats obviously reminds one of The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe – not to mention the White Witch’s wolf who is head of her secret police – but there’s more; Jenny says of being trapped in the wardrobe that she ‘screamed and screamed and screamed, till I was gasping.’ Now this may be a bit of a stretch – and I may be overthinking again – but you mentioned Scream and Scream Again in one of our previous interviews but if the repetition of screams were not enough, the 1970 horror film also just happens to be about a serial killer who drains his victims’ blood! Also, last time, since you vividly recalled the childhood trips to the bingo hall as a kid, is the stale handbag, perfume, lipstick, mints and cigarettes how you remember the old ladies smelling?

RUSS: Jenny’s story – for the most part – is a memory. I slept in the attic when I was a boy, (eventually with half a dozen canaries) and the old man had built – built-in wardrobes across the length of the wall. Three sets of double doors. But inside, there was no divider between each notional wardrobe. So you could enter via door one and travel the length of the thing inside to emerge at door three – or door six if you’re counting each door leaf as a single. It was the place that clothes went to die. When I was put to bed, there was no night light. The place was as black as pitch — you truly couldn’t see a hand in front of your face. I remember hearing voices — I must have been very small – three or four – maybe? – and I got out of bed to try to find the door to come downstairs. And in the dark I lost my bearings. I entered the wardrobe via one door and before I knew it was lost in its be-furred and cavernous interior, and I couldn’t find my way out. It was clearly traumatic enough for me to remember vividly half a century later.

DAMIAN: I’ll be tempted to slip Aconitum into your orange juice when it’s my next round if you say no to either of the following questions! Firstly, The Wolf’s Head pub sign absolutely MUST be a wee nodette to The Slaughtered Lamb from An American Werewolf in London (1981)?

RUSS: Yup.

And the pub sign in ZENANA. Graphic design by Gavin Lines

DAMIAN: And the handle of the sword cane which Strange gets stabbed with is obviously supposed to be similar to the one Claude Rains uses to kill Lon Chaney Jr in The Wolf Man (1941)?

RUSS: Yes — the head at least.

There was a bit of Murder By Decree (1979) with the sword-stick too — presumably, meant to be Spivey, if one’s keeping to the much discredited Stephen Knight solution.

The finale was originally conceived as a nod to the famous final battle between Lee and Cushing in the ‘58 Dracula — the Douglas Fairbanks leap from the refectory table, and all the rest of it. I think we also nodded to the end of Risen from the Grave (1968), as well. But that particular incarnation of the ending did not meet with Universal – or even Hammer – enthusiasm.

DAMIAN: All-time favourite werewolf movie?

RUSS: That’s tough — but it’s probably got to be American Werewolf in London — if only for La Agutter. But there’s also John Woodvine, Brian Glover… and a very young Rik Mayall to enjoy. And it’s a London that’s much gone. The London of my salad days. Well — salad dodger days at least.

Feeding time with Jenny Agutter in ‘An American Werewolf in London’

DAMIAN: Immediately after the Strange stabbing, Thursday is dismissive of Endeavour’s theory regarding the true identity of Sturgis and the mental connection Jenny may have had with him. Thursday then asks when he starts at Kidlington under McNutt and after telling him, he just walks away in silence and gets into the car with his new bagman, Siddle, leaving Endeavour standing alone looking absolutely devastated. I know that I’ve probably asked you variations on this question before but in that moment, does his expression illustrate the loss of a friend, a respected colleague or a parental figure who showed Endeavour more kindness and caring than his own father ever did?

RUSS: All of that, I would imagine. You’d need to ask Shaun.

DAMIAN: Regardless of whatever might have come later, Thursday is cruel at that very moment isn’t he?

RUSS: I think they probably both felt things had come to the end of the road. But I think that’s the nature of their relationship. They might fight and hurt each other – but when the chips are down… At least, that’s always been the way so far.

DAMIAN: And again in that very moment, having been manipulated, betrayed and rejected by Violetta, Endeavour is completely alone isn’t he?

RUSS: He has failed — utterly. He has been gulled.

DAMIAN: I don’t know if it’s your skill as a writer or the strength of the performances – possibly both, of course – but isn’t it interesting how the audience’s sympathies with various characters might have shifted throughout the years. Certainly, as I’ve told you before, I was surprised by the way he’s treated Strange in the past and most especially the appalling way in which he tried to hurt Joan with his snooty attitude and condescending words. Indeed, as Thursday says in this episode, ‘you look down your nose at everyone’ and ‘nobody’s good enough’. However, in this story at least, my sympathies firmly lie with Endeavour.

RUSS: I think you and Thursday have a point. I think we were just drawing on those less agreeable aspects of the later Morse’s character. The things that tested the patience and innate decency of Robbie Lewis. Morse as a Detective Chief Inspector could be pretty lacerating. The withering, belittling phrase was never far from his lips. The finer things in life — the opera, the jag, the intellectual comforts – those things are his armour, aren’t they? They’re what stand in place of a meaningful emotional connection with another human being. They give him comfort and protection. So – he has the idealised and intellectualised love of high art, rather than the infinitely more messy real thing. We’re watching him bolt that armour on.

DAMIAN: In addition to this, of course, the audience has had to endure another agonising scene to watch concerning the death of Mrs Bright. Let’s remind ourselves of the final moments with her and her husband…

MRS BRIGHT: What a very smart man I married. You look terribly dashing.
BRIGHT: My dear, you were never lovelier.
MRS BRIGHT: Oh, I think I was.
BRIGHT: Not to me. And I should know.
MRS BRIGHT: I’m very proud of you, Puli. You’ve taken care of me so well this past year, these past years. You’ve always looked after me.
BRIGHT: And I always shall.
They kiss and he leaves her.

‘And I always shall…’ Heart-breaking. I know you would have introduced his wife much sooner if you had the screen time but for how long did you know that Mr Bright would become a widower?

RUSS: Um… Well, it needed to be its own thing. Its own story. And not just a slightly posher version of the Thursdays’ domestic scenes. So — sadly, it was always going that way.

DAMIAN: When I last interviewed Mr Lesser he told me that he had a discussion with the director, Kate Saxon, in which he confessed that he didn’t know how to play the scene where Thursday tells Bright his wife has died in the supposed accident. Isn’t that remarkable given the absolute power of his performance in the film?

RUSS: I didn’t know that. Unsurprisingly, Kate and Anton found the way to it. Anton has never been less than an absolute wonder across these films. And – let’s be honest – in everything he’s ever done. One of the many bits of great good fortune that befell Endeavour is getting Anton to come and work with us. Every scene is just a joy to behold. This year, alas – due to the demands of his presence in another place – our time with him has been much limited. But one treasures every second.

DAMIAN: It’s funny the things that you remember, but when I first rang Mr Lesser for an interview, it took him a while to answer and he apologised saying something like the phone was at the other end of the house – I honestly think he may have even said it was in the hall. Now, just compare this to the following dialogue when Bright is in denial, can’t accept his wife’s death and tells Thursday that he’s going to ring her to prove she’s still alive: ‘It just takes her a while to get to the phone, you see. It’s quite a way from, erm, from one part of the house to the hall. That’s where we keep the instrument.’ Is this a remarkable coincidence or did you base this on your own phone calls to Mr Lesser?

RUSS: It’s a remarkable coincidence, I promise you.

DAMIAN: And possibly even more agonising to watch than the aforementioned was the one where – despite Thursday’s best efforts – Endeavour tries to tell Bright that it was no accident and his wife died deliberately at the hands of Ludo for the insurance money.

Leicester
Uttoxeter
Dover
Oxford

Would you agree that Endeavour has become increasingly darker over the years but this was probably the darkest series yet?

RUSS: As above, so below.

DAMIAN: Let’s move onto the grand finale! In your wildest dreams, did you ever think that you would be writing a libretto to an opera?

RUSS: Ha! Well — it’s been the most marvellous sandpit to play in. The wonderful thing about the show has been – for the most part – if you can imagine it, you can do it. I would very much have liked to do a Promised Land, fish out of water story — but I think that’s about the one thing that turned out to be beyond our resources.

DAMIAN: Even after you’d finished the libretto with the help of Nicolo Rosetti’s translation, did you ever imagine it would sound so spectacular on screen?

RUSS: Well — Matt’s never come up short. He doesn’t know how to fail. But I think it’s pretty spectacular, even by his extraordinarily high standards.

DAMIAN: I know it’s something you’ve tried your hand at but whose idea was it for Matthew to make his cameo appearance as the conductor of the opera?

RUSS: I’d talked about the John Barry cameo as the conductor in Deadfall (1968). So – I’d always thought it would be lovely if we could get Matt to appear. We shot a lot more than was used. Maybe when we do the Director’s Cut.

He also appeared in his last Bond film, ‘The Living Daylights’

DAMIAN: Where were the opera house scenes filmed?

RUSS: La Fenice. A.k.a. Wimbledon Theatre. My only day on set that year, I think.

DAMIAN: And what was actually filmed in Venice?

RUSS: Mmm. This probably sounds flippant, but it really isn’t — the bits that are obviously Venice. All else was sleight of hand. Budget only allowed us to send Shaun and the most skeleton of crews. Real guerrilla stuff. So — what Kate did in FILM 3 was quite incredible. Miraculous, in fact.

DAMIAN: We’ve talked about The Godfather (1972) before but was the juxtaposition of the opera scenes with the shooting and death of Violetta inspired by the climax of the third part of Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy (1990)?

RUSS: Well — that all took place in the opera house and on the steps. I knew I always wanted it to end on the Isola di San Michele — the Island Cemetery.

Death in Venice (1971) was the jumping off point for everything. As a notion – rather than literally.

It felt climactic – La Boheme; Traviata… the doomed heroine. It was also a bit of a salute to the great Baz Luhrmann.

DAMIAN: Violetta tells Endeavour that she is sorry and that she loves him but did he really love her and, if so, how might this love compare to his feelings for Joan?

RUSS: I think he was absolutely beguiled. The Grand Passion. I think it was all about the new decade. He’d decided to try to be somebody else. To say yes where he’d usually say no. To be a new person. And that turned out well. Another life lesson.

DAMIAN: God knows – along with attempting to discover the identity of the Wednesday sandwich – I’ve tried in the past but I know you’ll never tell me which Endeavour you consider to be the best or pick a favourite but might you concede that ZENANA deserves a place in the top ten at least?

RUSS: Well — that’s very kind of you to say. Honestly, I’m no judge. I like bits of all of them, I suppose. I guess that’s the challenge of having so many regular characters — you might think that such and such a film was great for Max or Dorothea or Bright or Win… or Strange or… and so on.

DAMIAN: After all these years and episodes, I wonder if it becomes easier to write the scripts but more difficult to actually film them?

RUSS: The process has probably got more challenging year on year. Shaun and Rog have never wanted to tread water. They’re not interested in just doing a straight whodunit. Ever. So – that’s always a challenge. Everything has to come from or impact upon their characters. Rog likes something he can get his teeth into, that lets him stretch his muscles emotionally. Shaun – it’s all about the journey that Endeavour’s on. So — each series, outside of putting together 3, 4 or half a dozen Agatha Christie style whodunits — you’ve also got to take care of business on that front. You’ve got ‘Notes’ coming from about half a dozen places. The Network, the Mammoths, Shaun and Rog, the Director, Compliance… They’ll all typically have their own preoccupations, some of which will align, some of which will contradict and compete with each other for primacy — and if you want a happy ship, you’ve got to chart a careful course that addresses and resolves everyone’s concerns.

An innocent might be forgiven for thinking that writing a TV show is primarily about writing, but the job is – or, at least, has become – as much about squaring circles as anything else. Squaring circles and solving problems with as much elegance and economy as thirty odd years before the mast has taught you. The material you have at your disposal for this task is 26 letters of the alphabet in infinite combinations and a bit of punctuation. So.

DAMIAN: I know it won’t be much, but please tell us something about the final film with the ominous title of TERMINUS.

RUSS: Mmm. It became something other than it started out. But Kate Saxon returns, which is always a good thing. And she worked her own brand of magic on it.

DAMIAN: Well, we all have our entrances and our exits and I’m afraid we’ve come to the end. The end of our little chinwags but is it also the end of Endeavour?

RUSS: You’ll know the answer to some part of that question this evening.

DAMIAN: Russ, there’s never the time to say all that one would wish but you are the best and wisest of men, thanks for this and all the other interviews over the years.

RUSS: Oh – stop, now. Been a pleasure. Thanks for all of it.

~~~

CURTAIN

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2021: RUSSELL LEWIS PART II

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2021: RUSSELL LEWIS PART I

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An exclusive Endeavour interview with writer/deviser/executive producer Russell Lewis

Here we are again. Finally. At last.

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.

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.

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…

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2020: RUSSELL LEWIS PART III

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An exclusive Endeavour interview with writer/deviser/executive producer Russell Lewis

EXT. CHIGTON GREEN/POST OFFICE/ROAD – DAY 1

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.

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.

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 filling to 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.

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THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2020: STEPHEN LA RIVIERE

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2020: RUSSELL LEWIS PART II

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An exclusive Endeavour interview with writer/deviser/executive producer Russell Lewis

Special thanks to Stephen La Rivière

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.

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?

RUSS: Neither. I’ve never been fussed about cake.

DAMIAN: Please yourself.

Stay up to date with all my latest Endeavour cast and crew interviews via twitter @MrDMBarcroft

So, Russ is a hand model now is he? Hmm…

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2019: Russell Lewis Part III

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EXT. OXFORD – DAY 1 (18.55)

The long late light of a cool summer’s evening. Oxford – a half-remembered dream. Drowned streets. Subtle and aquatint.

Young lovers kiss in doorways, heedless of the murmuring world…

MURDER ON THE DANCEFLOOR

An exclusive interview with Russell Lewis

INT. BALLROOM – DAY 1 (19.20)

Caught in the beam of a Follow Spot, A PAIR of FAMILIAR SILHOUETTES come onto the floor.

M.C.: Would you please welcome onto the floor, couple Number Seven, Frederick and Winifred Thursday.

The No. ‘07’ stretched across a familiar set of shoulders. FRED and WIN. The Astaire and Rogers of East Cowley.

A moment between them. It’s been a while. WIN gives him a nervous smile. THURSDAY shoots her an encouraging wink.

THURSDAY: Here’s looking at you.

Music begins. And they are away — gliding effortlessly across the floor. Bobbing and dipping. It’s a beautiful thing.

DAMIAN: And so it was. Russ, I’ve seen Roger a few times either on set or location and he’s never particularly struck me as the ballroom dancing type. Do you ever think it might be an idea to check if an actor is happy or comfortable learning to dance -or grow a mustache for that matter- before typing this stuff?

RUSS: They tend to let you know pretty quickly if they’re not.

DAMIAN: What are you like on the dancefloor?

RUSS: I would refer you to Mx.Ellis Bextor.

DAMIAN: You write in COLOURS ‘It’s been a while’ but how long exactly and was dancing something that Mr and Mrs Thursday started back in London before the family moved to Oxford?

RUSS: It’s something that fell by the wayside with bringing up the kids — but now, more or less alone again, it’s something to which they’ve returned. An ‘interest.’

DAMIAN: Of all the quotes, in all the movies, why did you have Thursday say Bogie’s most famous line?

RUSS: Even heroes have heroes. I could see it being a film they liked.

DAMIAN: Well, what with the Thursdays dancing and Strange playing the trombone, it was quite a year for revelations and, potentially at least, we could have had another! A scene set in the hair salon in the first draft reads ‘Hazel comes to her appointments book — leafs through, and finds an appointment for MRS.BRIGHT…’. Might this suggest that you do actually have plans to introduce Reginald’s other half one day, but if not, can’t you at least tell us if she’s blonde or brunette?

RUSS: Well… funny you should ask… We may meet her yet.

DAMIAN: We see the welcome return of Jack Bannon as Sam Thursday who says to Endeavour, ‘You’ve been around Dad too long. It’s rubbing off’, followed by a line of description that reads: ‘Something about SAM’s tone suggests this isn’t the compliment it might once have been – but rather a rebuke’. I wouldn’t say that Thursday has rubbed off on Endeavour in any negative way but let’s look at the following exchange which follows the possibility of Sam as a murder suspect and see if it helps put this issue into some sort of context:

STRANGE looks at ENDEAVOUR as if seeing him for the first time.

STRANGE: Christ, you’re some piece of work. Listen to yourself. What d’you think the old man’d say he heard you talking about his boy like that?

ENDEAVOUR: He’d say I was doing my job.

STRANGE: Your job.

ENDEAVOUR: Think the unthinkable. Follow the evidence. Without fear or favour.

STRANGE: Wherever it leads?

ENDEAVOUR: Wherever it leads.

STRANGE: I’m senior.

ENDEAVOUR: Yes.

STRANGE: So long as that’s straight.

ENDEAVOURS: Always.

STRANGE: You start off down that road, you’re on your own. Deal me out.

ENDEAVOUR: I already did.

DAMIAN: Unlike Thursday’s actions in the next episode with the battered wife and Strange turning a blind eye in this one where the old man’s kids are concerned (not charging Joan for example for her part in the protest), Endeavour is right to play things by the book isn’t he?

RUSS: Caesar’s wife. Even more important to play it by the book, when Sam is potentially involved.

DAMIAN: Since they left on good terms when Thursday saw Sam off at the bus station when he joined the army, is there anything in particular that has happened offscreen that would explain why there was tension between father and son?

RUSS: Distance lends perspective. Sam’s older – a man, now. Some of those father/son scales have fallen from his eyes.

DAMIAN: Is it possible that Sam might, like his father before him, leave the army and join the police?

RUSS: Thursday & Thursday. It’s possible.

DAMIAN: Strange observes, ‘Just a girl? Might want to leave some for the rest of us. Claudine? That blondie one? Way you’ve been filling your dance-card lately, you think rationing was coming in.’ My thoughts exactly Jim, and this brings us to the subject of Endeavour’s Casanova phase again. However, let’s take a look at the following scene which is longer than the broadcast version:

INT. CLAUDINE’S BEDSIT – NIGHT 3 (23.59)

A deafening clap of thunder. Lit by streetlamp and lightning… ENDEAVOUR and CLAUDINE post-coital – lie in a tangle of bedclothes that has become a makeshift nest, teaspooned together — listening to the night rain. He’s smoking her cigarette. A moment — then:

ENDEAVOUR: Love and rain.

She retrieves her cigarette from his lips — and takes a drag.

CLAUDINE: How English.

ENDEAVOUR: I don’t think we can claim it all for ourselves. People have been doing this for as long as there’s been people. Before even. Right back to… whatever we were –

CLAUDINE: Quel philosophe!

ENDEAVOUR: They probably lay on a branch, just like this. Looking out at thunderheads breaking over the Savannah. Rain coming down on the leaves. Safe in that one brief moment from the vast unknowable careless awfulness of it all.

CLAUDINE: If he was as gloomy as you, I hope she kicked him out of the tree.

ENDEAVOUR: Gloomy?

CLAUDINE: Yes! Oui! My God! Some men. So gloomy after.

ENDEAVOUR: Some men?

CLAUDINE: Of course — that’s the part you hear. (a moment) Seriously — why do you do that? Like someone died.

ENDEAVOUR: In my case – someone usually has. I don’t know. Intimations of mortality, I suppose. They say you’re never so alive as when you’re close to death. Maybe the reverse is also true.

CLAUDINE: Jesus. It’s just sex. (a moment) It’s not love.

ENDEAVOUR: I know.

CLAUDINE: It’s good to be clear.

ENDEAVOUR: I’m under no illusions. A day. A week. A month. I’ll take how ever long we’ve got. Just one morning you won’t be there. I suppose I’ll miss you when you’ve gone. That’s all.

CLAUDINE: We said. No regrets.

ENDEAVOUR: How French.

CLAUDINE: Enculé.

She reaches behind her head to mock rake his cheek with her nails. A long moment. Some ember of desire sparks into flame.

CLAUDINE (cont’d): Again?

ENDEAVOUR: God, yes.

Her mouth finds his. Still falls the rain.

DAMIAN: There was also another revealing scene with Joan and Strange which we won’t discuss because much of the content was included in series six and hopefully won’t be cut again. However, do you think the juxtaposition of these two scenes might have put to rest any qualms I’ve had regarding Endeavour smoking and his uncharacteristic libidinous behaviour?

RUSS: Uncharacteristic libidinous behaviour? If ever a character – as evinced by Colin’s novels – had sex on his mind…

Endeavour – perish the thought – managing to squeeze in a one night stand with Charlie’s daughter, and something more substantial with Claudine, hardly makes him Casanova, does it? It grew out of a conversation with Andy [Wilson, director] when we were making CARTOUCHE. A remark he made about ‘68 definitely being a bit of lively year romantically. Generally – he meant – not specifically.

Don’t you think that it grounds the longing of the older Chief Inspector for romance – and I use the word in both its pure and euphemistic sense – in something real? In his late 40s through to the end, what he’s missing is something he remembers, something he knew. Physical intimacy – as the boys in blue might put it.

The cigarettes… You’re really overthinking this… It’s her cigarette. Just strikes me as something Gallic. C’est tout! When I was young, French cigarettes was about as cool as it got. Jacques Brel – literally made of cigarettes. Can you imagine Rififi without smoking? Ditto the mood of the scene. Ooh – as they say – la la!

But, yes. Maybe. It’s a long time ago now, and I think there’s perhaps a bit of Endeavour trying to live la vie normale. However, I suspect that it always feels for him – to some small degree – as if he’s wearing someone else’s clothes. You can track much of his state of mind back to CODA. And then HARVEST and later. So — all of these things feed into his emotional condition.

DAMIAN: And editing can sometimes create almost a different meaning or context from what was originally written can’t it?

RUSS: You will not find me disagreeing with you on that point.

DAMIAN: Where are we on the idea that I proposed a while back regarding giving the fans a DVD release of a writer’s cut of episodes such as this one with all the deleted scenes restored?

RUSS: Oh – I think that’s highly unlikely, now. But you never know…

~~~

INTERVAL

~~~

Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark / Fills the wide vessel of the universe…

DAMIAN: QUARTET then, given that series five was loaded with allusions to contemporary politics such as issues on immigration, was the inclusion of quotes from Henry V, arguably Shakespeare’s most patriotically British play, an audacious attempt to mock the establishment?

RUSS: No, not really. It was mostly about selling the dummy of the medieval opening. And it’s one of the great ‘eve of battle’ scene setters.

DAMIAN: Certainly less subtle, of course, were the references to the Berserkers and the business with the pig’s head in MUSE, not to mention the following quote from this episode spoken by Millie Bagshot: ‘our friends on the continent are taking it seriously enough. Why else do you imagine De Gaulle is doing all he can to keep us out of the European Community? Buy British – Get Boris.’ Well, you’re certainly not pulling your punches where the other boys in blue are concerned are you?

RUSS: Well, Oxford’s a long tradition of wankers in waistcoats – so such sentiments are pretty timeless. What’s that great line from Belloq about John Vavassour de Quentin Jones who was given to throwing stones? ‘Like many of the Upper Class, he liked the sound of Breaking Glass.’ In much the same way as John Bull is a sort of British, well, let’s be honest, English archetype, Boris was often used as a collective identifier for citizens of Redland. That it also happened to be the name by which a former Secretary of State is best known to the public was just serendipity. I find all of this a great deal less funny than may appear. Damien Timmer [Executive producer and co-managing director of the production company, Mammoth Screen] said he thought ‘68 had the angriest tone of any of the series up to that point – and I suspect he may have been right. Much then – and much now to be angry about.

DAMIAN: Is there ever any concern from either the production company or network regarding how political Endeavour should or shouldn’t get or it is regarded as no more than the sort of political satire one would expect from something like Have I Got News For You?

RUSS: If there is a concern, it has not yet been confided to me.

DAMIAN: Wouldn’t the backdrop of racial tension in Oxford have been even more dramatic had Monica with the moped made an appearance as I can’t imagine Endeavour didn’t think of his ex girlfriend while all this was going on?

RUSS: It might have been dramatically convenient, but we try to resist such urges.

DAMIAN: Although clearly reluctant to replace Fancy, wasn’t it still a bit unconvincing that Endeavour would take part in any It’s a Knockout tomfoolery?

RUSS: You clearly think so.

DAMIAN: As with the lovely scene from NOCTURNE in which Max was touched by the death of a young school girl, he seems equally distraught in his attempts of saving Steven and it’s wonderful to see James given something else to play other than the typically sanguine and unflappable aspects (I also appreciated the fact that he later mentions his time at Bart’s). I think the character development for Bright, Strange and Joan has really done justice to the superb actors who play them in the last couple of series, and yes, I know it’s terribly difficult, but do think that along with Dorothea, Max now deserves a little more screen time in order to blossom?

RUSS: Find me the screen time.

DAMIAN: Of course, scenes that do offer a glimpse into supporting characters’ personal lives and backstory are often the first to get cut. Let’s take a look at the following scene that sadly didn’t appear in the episode:

INT. AMBER LODGE/LOBBY – DAY 1 [12.03]

DOROTHEA waiting as THURSDAY enters with STRANGE.

DOROTHEA: Chief Inspector…

THURSDAY: Not right now, Miss Frazil.

DOROTHEA: Is this anything to do with the shooting at Christ Church Meadow?

THURSDAY: As I said – a statement will be made in the fullness.

THURSDAY and STRANGE start up the stairs — and we find:

CLAUDINE at the RECEPTION desk. She comes across to DOROTHEA…

CLAUDINE: Miss Frazil? Claudine Darc. I’m a photo-journalist.

DOROTHEA: Bad luck.

CLAUDINE: And a friend of Morse. Would you sign something for me?

CLAUDINE pulls out a well-thumbed book — ‘TRAVELS WITH MYSELF – THE WAR IN KOREA – BY DOROTHEA FRAZIL.’

DOROTHEA: Good heavens. Where did you find that?

CLAUDINE: A book-seller on the Seine by Pont-Neuf. It’s a classic. It means a lot to me. (as DOROTHEA SIGNS) What was it like? For a woman on the Front Line.

DOROTHEA: Are you squeamish?

CLAUDINE: No.

DOROTHEA: Then you’ll be alright. Why?

CLAUDINE: Why didn’t you do more?

DOROTHEA: Ask me when you come back.

DAMIAN: Was this scene scrapped in pre-production or actually filmed and then cut in the final edit?

RUSS: Do you know, I honestly can’t recall. I suspect it didn’t get shot.

DAMIAN: So presumably it was too traumatising but couldn’t Dorothea have written books on other subjects?

RUSS: I don’t think trauma came into it. And Dorothea’s ouvres may well extend into other areas which have not yet been written about.

DAMIAN: What was it then?

RUSS: Fatigue. Revulsion for the slaughter and suffering. The absolute pointlessness of it all. Frazil is as tough as nails – but I think a sense of ‘Say they gave a war and nobody came.’ could have been part of it. On the one hand journalists bear witness, on the other the notion that by sending back reports to be consumed along of the kippers and kedgeree that the reporter is somehow complicit and by some means enabling the suffering and carnage. I’m not saying that’s right – but it’s how she may have felt.

DAMIAN: Endeavour asks, ‘No sandwich today?’, to which Thursday replies ‘Sunday? We’ll get a roast down the Lamb and Flag.’ After four years, wouldn’t he know that Thursday doesn’t have sandwiches either on a Saturday or Sunday, or has Endeavour bumped his noggin so many times on the headboard lately that he’s starting to lose his memory?

RUSS: In the heat of the hunt, the days run one into another.

DAMIAN: And what does Thursday have on his Wed… oh, nevermind. Taking into account the ‘love and rain’ scene, when Endeavour says to Claudine that ‘Sun’s going already. The year’s turned. Bonfires and hoar-frost. Mist’ll be up soon. The breath of winter’, is he not only accepting her imminent departure but also trying to tell her it’s OK or is it the case, as when she takes a photo of him, he remarks, ‘I wasn’t ready’?

RUSS: “When you knew that it was over, you were suddenly aware that the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair.” The stages of grief. Denial. He’s aware that something is off – that she may be slipping away – but not how close it is to the end. ‘I wasn’t ready’ is a genuine throwaway – to be freighted with meaning in hindsight. But no – for all his fine talk – when the moment finally comes, he wasn’t ready for her to go.

DAMIAN: Endeavour goes to the pub to drown his sorrows after Claudine leaves for Vietnam and then we cut to the scene in the script, which is slightly longer from the broadcast version and contains dialogue cut from a previous episode, where Joan asks him in for coffee. Had he gone in, would they have…

RUSS: But he didn’t go in. He’s not an absolute cad. He’s enough emotional intelligence to know that to go to Joan on the rebound would be to use her – and that he would never do.

EXT. JOAN’S FLAT – NIGHT 4 (23.30)

ENDEAVOUR and JOAN come down the street to her front door. The walk has sobered ENDEAVOUR somewhat.

JOAN: How’s it going with you and Jim?

ENDEAVOUR: It’s not exactly the Yellow House. But it means we can both put something away. I should have enough for a deposit on somewhere by next year.

JOAN: A man of property.

ENDEAVOUR: I suppose.

JOAN: Didn’t Jane Austen have something to say about a single man in possession of a good fortune?

ENDEAVOUR: It’ll hardly be Netherfield Park. (the thought strikes him) Since when do you throw around Austen quotations?

JOAN: You didn’t need to walk me back, you know.

ENDEAVOUR: Old habits.

And here it is. Joan’s flat. No Fred to tap on the window. Nothing to stop them.

JOAN: Do you want to come in?

In the space between the question and the answer – stars are born and die.

ENDEAVOUR: Coffee?

Of course not ‘coffee’!

JOAN: Yeh.

And all he wants is there before him.

ENDEAVOUR: I don’t go much for coffee.

As the moment slips by…

ENDEAVOUR (cont’d): Besides…

JOAN: Besides?

Another moment, and he would be lost forever. What he wants to say is, I don’t trust myself.’ What he says is:-

ENDEAVOUR: Things to do.

JOAN: Okay. Goodnight, then.

She gives him a peck. ENDEAVOUR reacts.

JOAN (cont’d): What?

ENDEAVOUR leans in to her hair, to breathe her in…

JOAN: Morse…

ENDEAVOUR: Vespertine.

DAMIAN: Vespertine! There’s more references to James Bond and various other Cold War/Spy films and television than you could shake a loaded umbrella at but it would probably prove very dull if I kept asking if such and such is from so and so and you kept simply replying ‘yes’ so instead, can I just ask what some of the most potent screen images related to the genre were running through your head as you wrote QUARTET?

RUSS: I think for a while the film was called ‘VESPERTINE’ – but it wasn’t particularly a nod to Miss Lynd. Well — this was our out and out salute to the 60s spy genre, and we only get to do these things once… so the Len Deighton/Harry Palmer trilogy loomed large, as it always does.

Things like The Quiller Memorandum. A Dandy in Aspic. Of the Bonds – Goldfinger. The pre-credit sequence and Auric’s factory. That’s what I was reaching for with Endeavour prowling around the perfume factory after dark. Alas. It was fun to take him up to that London. Albert Hall and the tube station.

DAMIAN: If we could end on quite a serious matter which relates to a lot of the themes of the episode, the terribly sad and shocking Salisbury poisoning happened only shortly after QUARTET was broadcast, now, would you have had to rewrite the script or postpone broadcast if the appalling event had occurred earlier?

RUSS: It’s quite possible. Dark days.

DAMIAN: Finally, what can you say about FILM 3, CONFECTION?

RUSS: Hard and soft centres abound. Um… ‘69 marked the final entry in Gordon Murray’s ‘Three Colours Primary’ Trilogy, and with The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society landing in Nov.’68 – this sort of felt like a chance to bring things together over the final summer of the 60s. Village Green is v.nostalgic – a harkening back to some supposed halcyon age. ‘Preserving the old ways…’ Well — I’m not sure all the old ways are worthy or deserving of being preserved. Nostalgia’s a bit of a slow poison. Seductive and comforting, but lethal in its way. Like too much sugar.

THE ENDEAVOUR INTERVIEWS 2019: Russell Lewis Part II

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LATE NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE

CARTOUCHE & PASSENGER

DAMIAN: You were surprised I liked CARTOUCHE. Why exactly?

RUSS: I thought you might find it too frivolous – too knowing.

DAMIAN: I’ve tried a couple of times in the past to get you to tell me what your favourite episodes are but without much success. Since you’re unlikely to budge on this, perhaps you might instead at least acknowledge that some episodes are more important than others?

RUSS: I don’t know if I’d agree with you over importance. To borrow from Marge Gundersson, ‘People always need the little stamps.’

DAMIAN: Let’s look at it from a different perspective then; would you agree that it is unlikely that ITV, Mammoth Screen or yourself would wish to open or close a series of a highly respected Sunday-night detective drama with an episode featuring a mummy on the rampage in Oxford?

RUSS: I would. But while we probably wouldn’t open or close a run with a CARTOUCHE like number, if the entirety of the series followed suit then things might get a little samey.

INT. ROXY/CINEMA SCREEN – DAY 1

In darkness. A crackly, repeating MORSE CODE signal.

— .–. …

Onscreen: Black and white art-deco 1930s FILM LOGO — ‘MAMMOTH PICTURES STUDIOS’ wrapped around a spinning globe topped with a radio antenna sending ‘lightning bolts’ into the ether. An airship circumnavigates the sphere, against the rotation of the planet.

MUSIC of a distinctly Egyptian theme BEGINS… Black and White — TITLES against shifting desert sands. “MERIAM C. DENHAM presents EMIL VALDEMAR in THE PHARAOH’S CURSE” “Screenplay by W.P. Mayhew” “Directed by Von Mayerling.” &c.

DAMIAN: The original description for the Mammoth Pictures Studio logo was more reminiscent of the old RKO and Universal Pictures from the late twenties and early thirties and significantly different from the screen version. At what point did you have the ingenious idea of actually using a mammoth?

RUSS: When we couldn’t clear the original homage. I think I’ve mentioned before the legal minefield of clearance.

DAMIAN: It’s not actually Cavendish though is it?

RUSS: Doubtless an antecedent.

Production designer Paul Cripps designed and built the Mammoth Pictures Studio logo; basically carving an iceberg from poly, bought a Mammoth which he then painted and sprayed. The background was also painted and then he simply stuck both the iceberg and mammoth on a turntable.

DAMIAN: This treasure must surely be proudly housed safely behind glass at Mammoth Screen?

RUSS: Like the Anglia knight? Alas. I haven’t seen it around the office.

DAMIAN: I think I get that W.P. Mayhew was the drunken writer in Barton Fink, (Max) Von Mayerling was the silent movie director turned butler from Sunset Boulevard but is Meriam C. Denham a composite of King Kong director and producer Merian C. Cooper and the Carl Denham character from the same film?

RUSS: Full marks.

DAMIAN: And accompanying those opening film credits, we hear Matthew Slater’s music score. Now, Matt has been doing a fantastic job as composer for most of the last couple of years or so -I think PREY was his first full score?- but CARTOUCHE was simply stunning wasn’t it and almost indistinguishable from a big Hollywood film soundtrack?

RUSS: Matt’s an extraordinary talent, and his scores are a joy. His work has spared our blushes on many an occasion.

DAMIAN: There’s been some great scores for horror and fantasy films such as Max Steiner’s work on King Kong, music for the Universal Monster Cycle of the 30s and 40s by composers like Paul Dessau, Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner and Franz Waxman, in addition to the various artists, perhaps most notably James Bernard, who scored the Hammer films. I’m wondering if you listened to any of these while writing CARTOUCHE or discussed them with Matt as reference points because there’s definitely a Hammer influence in his score isn’t there?

RUSS: Yeh, we talked about Waxman, and James Bernard.

DAMIAN: It’s perhaps no coincidence that amongst Valdemar’s credits, Buddy and Louie Meet the Pharaoh is mentioned because of all the various costumes and makeup designs for the character over the years, the one in CARTOUCHE most resembles the one in (Budd) Abbott and (Lou) Costello Meet the Mummy. Was this slightly low budget design the look you were going for?

RUSS: Kind of. The Hammers also started to look a bit ragged – no pun intended – very quickly. It was meant to invoke something of a B-picture, knocked out very quickly, and on a limited budget. But Andy – our director – had a lot of fun with it.

DAMIAN: Despite having the most iconic makeup design, I’ve always found Karloff’s The Mummy to be a little slow and stagey much like Dracula as opposed to more cinematic masterpieces from Universal such Bride of Frankenstein, and actually much prefer Hammer’s The Mummy. Do you have a favourite?

RUSS: A favourite Universal or a favourite Hammer – or a favourite Mummy? I’m with you on Bride all the way.

DAMIAN: I meant a favourite Mummy. In comparison to other gothic literary characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Jekyll and Hyde etc., the Mummy is possibly the least interesting and I just wondered from a writers perspective, which film you thought provided the most engaging characterisation?

RUSS: Bubba Ho Tep. I suppose the first two Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz Mummy pictures. And of those two, the second probably gives you the biggest window on Imhotep’s history, doesn’t it? But – let’s be frank – as a franchise, it’s never been particularly deep, has it? I don’t think I mind the Karloff as much as you do. It is pretty slow, but it does set down all the key lore. Probably the least said about the latest incarnation the better.

DAMIAN: After the success of individual horror character franchises such as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, Universal created a shared universe for these classic monsters. Now, considering that these films are meant to follow on from each other, it’s rather bizarre that Lionel Atwill is cast in so many and yet plays completely different characters including Inspector Krogh (Son of Frankenstein), Doctor Theodore Bohmer (The Ghost of Frankenstein), the Mayor (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), Inspector Arnz (House of Frankenstein) and Inspector Holtz (House of Dracula). Regardless, with the nod to his name in the script and the character with the one arm, why has the memory of Atwill endured perhaps more than other supporting Universal character players such as my personal favourite, Dwight Frye?

RUSS: I think – as you say – it was probably Atwill’s presence in so many different incarnations that guaranteed his immortality. Ah – Dwight Frye. Will Dwight Frye make you Frye of Dwight?!

Dwight Frye in this magnificent publicity still for Dracula (1931)

DAMIAN: I suppose in a similar vein to the Carry On films and other beloved institutes, Universal and Hammer had a repertoire of supporting roles players which we don’t quite see to the same extent in contemporary productions. Do you think that, in always striving to prove their versatility and avoid typecasting, it’s a pity we no longer enjoy character actors in the same way anymore?

RUSS: Well, a Hammer never really felt like a Hammer without the appropriately named Michael Ripper, did it? I just don’t think we make things the same way. The world changes. But I’m very grateful we’ve still got all those wonderful films, and those regular faces to enjoy.

Michael Ripper who possibly appeared in more Hammer films than any other actor.

DAMIAN: And the Hammer Horrors featured many glamourous scream queens such as Valerie Leon and Ingrid Pitt but Veronica Carlson must still be a favourite who you mentioned in one of our early interviews and gets a nod in CARTOUCHE as Veronique Carlton. In your opinion, why is she the epitome of the 60s Hammer and British Horror scream queen?

RUSS: I think it’s that she pulled off that extraordinary back to back double in ‘68 and ‘69 with the Count and then the Baron. Dracula Has Risen from the Gravy — and Frankenstein Must be Dismayed.

DAMIAN: Apart from Bela Lugosi who died in 1956, which of the iconic horror actors would you have liked to have cast as Emil Valdemar if CARTOUCHE was actually made in the year in which it was set?

RUSS: Well — we were thinking about Bogdanovich’s Targets a lot – which was a big jumping off point for the story. So – it was Karloff the Uncanny, all the way. It would have had to be someone British and old enough to have served in the Great War.

Targets (1968) Boris Karloff is so scary he even makes himself jump.

DAMIAN: As always, there’s so many references in the episode such as Fu Manchu, the Corman/Price cycle and Poe more generally, that we can’t possibly discuss them all, although I thought the nod to Lauren Bacall (Betty Perske/Persky) was particularly lovely because she was actually a theatre usher in real life wasn’t she?

RUSS: Exactly that.

DAMIAN: It was wonderful to see Thursday in such a (rare) good mood reminiscing about the cinema of his childhood although I was less impressed with Endeavour’s response – is he only interested in watching Ingmar Bergman films and -much later in life- Last Tango in Paris?

RUSS: Colin didn’t really give us much of a steer on his cinematic interests. But Endeavour’s recollection of Saturday Morning Pictures are mine. I’m not sure if it made the cut – but his invocation of Dante made Damien Timmer chuckle, which always pleases me.

DAMIAN: Yes it did, something about all that screaming in the dark. However, for someone who consistently shows such a reverence in their writing for classic cinema, I’m somewhat surprised and confused by such negative recollections of Saturday Morning Pictures. I would have thought you would have more in common with Thursday than Endeavour in this regard?

RUSS: Endeavour’s recollections are perhaps not unsurprisingly my recollection of the one and only trip I made to the Granada, St.John’s Hill for Saturday Morning Pictures. I can still hear the screaming.

DAMIAN: Starting with Carol this series, Endeavour begins his Casanova phase which I had a few problems with and hope to debate in a future interview, however, can you not think of a nice young lady to introduce to Strange for a change?

RUSS: Well — we have seen him out on a double-date with Endeavour – to a Horror Double Bill appropriately enough. Well — I look forward to discussing Endeavour’s Casanova phase. A one night stand with the least appropriate young woman imaginable – and a meaningful few months with Claudine, of whom he had hopes. Some Casanova phase. Surely such Homework would warrant, ‘Must try harder!’ in the margin?

DAMIAN: And speaking of other halves, Bright is eating alone in the restaurant because his wife is otherwise engaged yet again! Come on now Russ, this is getting quite ridiculous unless Reginald has perhaps buried her under the patio or keeping her well-preserved mummified corpse in the fruit cellar?

RUSS: It’s been quite fun keeping people guessing about Mrs.Bright. We shall see.

DAMIAN: Towards the end of the episode, Charlie says ‘You’re the best of us, Fred’, to which Thursday replies, ‘The best of us never came home’. Earlier, when reminiscing about Saturday morning matinees as a child, Thursday mentions to Endeavour that he’d go in first and then ‘spring the window in the Gents for Chas and Billy’. Can you tell us more about Billy, presumably the youngest of the three Thursday brothers, or is this perhaps something you might elaborate on in a future story?

RUSS: There is a story that tells us more about Billy – but whether we will get to make it is doubtful. The exchange rate has taken a bit of a hit since I first had it in mind — and probably rules it out.

DAMIAN: You make the parallels between ex-Detective Sergeant Ronald Beavis and Endeavour quite explicit with similar characters traits and shared interests including a passion for opera; the two even have the same Rosalind Calloway performance of La Traviata LP – oh, just out of curiosity, why were you so specific in the script that the record not have her image on the sleeve?

RUSS: Was I? I think I just wanted to avoid the LP Endeavour had signed in the very first film also being owned by Beavis. As if it were the ONLY Rosalind Calloway recording in existence.

DAMIAN: Anyway, after leaving the museum at the end of the episode, there’s a discussion of the parallels between Beavis and Endeavour and Thursday says ‘he’d no family to keep him on the straight. Lot to be said for family’, to which Endeavour replies, ‘What if you don’t have one? Is that how you finish your days? Alone in some two-bob kip with nothing but a bottle for company?’. Thursday ends the discussion with, ‘That was his future. Not yours. You’ll make better choices’. First of all, does Thursday really believe this, and secondly, would he, if not really approve, then reluctantly give his consent -at this particular moment in time at least- if such choices included Joan?

RUSS: I don’t think there’s any reason for Fred to think Endeavour won’t make better choices. His first thought would be of Joan’s happiness. If being with Endeavour made her happy, then I’m sure Thursday would be behind her all the way.

DAMIAN: Of course, we know how it ends for Endeavour, but the way the scene is written suggests that he does too. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that loneliness is a subjective experience. For someone like Endeavour with all his emotional baggage and psychological damage, his loneliness and estrangement might foster a self-defeating attitude in that the more he marginalises himself, the more his protracted loneliness intensifies, and becomes increasingly difficult to break free from such a mindset that negatively influences his perception of relationships making him more pessimistic as to their outcome (as might be the case with Joan or Susan Fallon for that matter). To what extent would you agree with all this and has Endeavour -again, at this point in the story- accepted his fate or is he simply just a miserable sod?

RUSS: No – I don’t think he’s accepted his fate at all at this point. Did he ever? He always seemed optimistic when pursuing romance. In this instance, I think Endeavour was rattled by finding some similarities with Beavis – primarily, the music – and beyond that, the want of family. And, of course, he was an ex-copper.

DAMIAN: And so without further delay or cancellation, we arrive at possibly one of the most beautifully shot films of this or any other series of Endeavour. You’ve often found inspiration from poetry during the conception and development of characters such as Thursday (Henry Reed’s Lessons of the War – Naming of Parts in particular) and Bright (Betjeman’s Subaltern’s Love Song), so I’m wondering if there’s any deeper significance to your inclusion of WH Auden’s Night Mail in PASSENGER beyond the theme of trains?

RUSS: Well – all credit to Jim Field Smith and DoP Jamie Cairney. For my part, it was just an early memory of a re-run of the 1936 documentary that ends with the verse. The British Documentary Film Movement is an endless source of wonder and inspiration. But ‘Night Mail’… probably melts a bit into the train journey in ‘I Know Where I’m Going’. Trains – particularly the old steamers – have an innate air of romance, mystery and – for our purposes – danger. That ‘The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations’ makes the list of ‘These Foolish Things’ is no accident. The Orient Express. The Blue Train. The 4:50 From Paddington. All aboard!

DAMIAN: Interestingly, Auden was addicted to the crime genre and had some very particular opinions about it which shaped the poem, Detective Story, and an essay on the subject, The Guilty Vicarage, in which he makes a series of observations while deconstructing the Whodunit formula including the discourse between good and evil, the ethical and eristic conflict between Us and Them and the dialectics of innocence and guilt, while also identifying its five essential elements: milieu, victim, murderer, suspects and detectives. Perhaps even more than Sherlock Holmes’ more cosmopolitan and diverse Victorian London for example, I wonder if it’s milieu that’s particularly applicable to the Morse Universe if we view Oxford as a kind of garden of Eden in which the various sins don’t necessarily attract evil to the city, but instead reveal the evil that already inhabits the dreaming spires hiding under the gown of piousness and respectability?

RUSS: ‘As the milieu told its tale…’ I think much of Auden’s take on the Whodunit applies particularly to the Golden Age and the notion of Mayhem Parva. It probably starts to break down when applied to Bay City. Oxford as a Garden of Eden? I guess I’m with you about the frailties of human nature residing there already – rather than something that arrives with an interloper. (Though that may change…) But no more or less than any other town of a like size. Don’t be fooled for a moment by the architecture. Or by the trappings of academe. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. A juicy and coveted Chair is just as likely to be pursued, as is the wife or daughter of another don. Clixby Bream come on down! That’s one of the many things Colin did so well in the novels. And he knew that world better than most. Where abideth man, there abideth sin.

Richard Briers as Sir Clixby Bream in the original Morse: Death is Now My Neighbour

DAMIAN: And perhaps Endeavour represents this loss of innocence more acutely than either Inspector Morse or Lewis ever did?

RUSS: Yes, I think that’s fair to say. We have a much younger protagonist. And a romantic to boot. He was always going to have much further to fall. But I think that one of the things about his older incarnation is some part of that hope still remains. That’s what lends it its melancholy. And, of course, it’s what redeems him.

DAMIAN: One aspect of Auden’s musings on the detective story that certainly can’t be applied to Endeavour is that the characters are not changed in or by their actions. Indeed, reflecting on the heartbreak and misery frequently bestowed upon Endeavour and Joan for example, how far are you willing to go in putting your loyal and loving audience on a downer?

RUSS: Does it bring the audience down, do you think? One of the great, unlooked for delights of writing this thing has been charting the push and pull of those binary stars. Who knew?

I don’t know about putting the audience on a downer, but how far am I willing to go with telling that story? All the way. Always.

EXT. JOAN’S FLAT/ROOF – DAY

JOAN clambers up through a skylight onto the roof. ENDEAVOUR follows. By the time he’s out and into the daylight, with the resultant queasiness of realisation that he’s up high. JOAN is at the edge, looking out over OXFORD.

JOAN: It was the view I fell in love with.

ENDEAVOUR’S POV: JOAN against a backdrop of magic hour Oxford – a sky of pink and pearl.

ENDEAVOUR: Yes.

A world contained in a single word. If his heart were to stop now, it would be enough. To die in the moment of perfection. Like…

ENDEAVOUR (cont’d): Cherry blossom.

His whisper lost on the breeze.

JOAN: You can’t see from there. Come closer.

ENDEAVOUR: This is as close as I get.

And it is. And ever will be.

ENDEAVOUR (cont’d): Come back now.

And it is. And ever will be.

JOAN: Scared of heights?

ENDEAVOUR: Not heights. Just falling…

DAMIAN: Fans may occasionally debate the merits of certain plot points and the motivation of various suspects or perpetrators but there can be little doubt that scenes such as this clearly demonstrate your transcendent and unrivalled talent for consistently writing characters in a detective drama that we all care about so very deeply. Knowing that you will almost certainly deflect the compliment in your now familiar self-effacing and reticent maner, I challenge you to give me an example of just one other detective drama written for TV that consistently delivers both the mystery and emotion of Endeavour.

RUSS: I don’t watch enough to have a representative sample upon which to draw. But, I think if all we were doing was constructing a puzzle for the audience to solve, it would be a very dreary exercise. A much bigger conversation probably, but, ‘Why write at all?’ Why tell stories? It’s about making a connection, isn’t it? One heart speaking to another. I think if you’re going to do it at all, then you have to be prepared to go all in. The audience can sniff out fakery at 500 yards. You might be dressing something up in slightly different clothes, or presenting it at one or more remove — but the initial impulse – the thing you’re having these characters saying – has to come from something real.

The plot and the whodunit are hugely important – but it’s the emotional beats that I suspect will outlast the conundrum. “All the feels”, as I believe the young people have it. Like the man said, “Nobody goes home whistling the scenery”.

DAMIAN: And then you almost go and spoil it all by following such a beautiful scene by having Claudine appear and Endeavour lighting a cigarette for her which I have two problems with: firstly, although I understand that one of the functions of the scene was Joan wanting to introduce Endeavour to someone who might look after him, doesn’t the smile he gives Claudine show his instant attraction to her despite having literally just walked away from Joan only seconds earlier and somewhat undermine his passion and love for Joan and all the pink, pearl and cherry blossom?

RUSS: C’est la vie, mon vieux.

DAMIAN: The second aspect was Endeavour lighting her cigarette; why would he even be carrying a lighter when he doesn’t smoke? – yet!

RUSS: You will recall Thursday’s advice to Trewlove concerning cigarettes. We forget now – in these more health conscious times – the social connection and conviviality that was part of the theatre of nicotine. “Cigarette?” was a great ice-breaker. An instant connection. For a detective dealing with those who have witnessed terrible things – to be able to offer a cigarette to someone ‘in shock’ was considered at the very least an act of kindness. Likewise – in interview, with a suspect or indeed the guilty party – the bestowal or withholding of tobacco – is a tool in the box. For Endeavour to be tootling about without a box of smokes would be a bit of a shortcoming.

DAMIAN: In response to my question in our last interview regarding how much longer the show could continue, you said that there’s a little way to go yet, but, you are starting to say goodbye. Therefore, given there’s a few other characters from the original series yet to make an appearance, I wonder if there’s still time to see Endeavour and Susan Fallon reunited and if so, is there even enough room for yet another doomed relationship – I mean how many great, ill-fated loves can one man have?

RUSS: I think it unlikely we’ll see Susan Fallon. The Prime Directive is all. Yet another doomed relationship? Well — given where we found him in ‘87 and left him at the end of century, one might argue that ALL his relationships were doomed. How many great, ill-fated loves can one man have? I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

Enter — DI RONNIE BOX, (30s), a young thief-taker, and DS PATRICK DAWSON, (30s), a mordant, humourless, career copper – a young Kenneth Colley.

BRIGHT: Ah. Perfect timing.

DAMIAN: Why now in this particular episode and what does Dawson’s relationship with Box say about his character here and in his future incarnation?

RUSS: There is perhaps more to tell on that score. We shall see if room is available.

DAMIAN: Unlike the antagonist DS Peter Jakes who audiences eventually began to warm to, there can’t be any such redemption for a character as despicable as DI Ronnie Box can there?

RUSS: Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

DAMIAN: Was his introduction here planned to set up the character (and storylines) as a regular for the sixth series?

RUSS: Box certainly played into the evolution of the Sixth Series.

DAMIAN: I think we may have spoke about the use of clichéd and stereotypical archetypes before and how they can be both useful -especially in detective stories in terms of misdirecting the audience- but also dangerous for a writer. In retrospect, do you think that a stuttering trainspotter who still lives with his mother was a bit much?

RUSS: Clearly not. One might as well be hung for a sheep. The major story here concerned… well – it’s not possible to set down what it concerned without spoilers. But, one thing that did horrify me was a suggestion that one was presenting a character on the autistic spectrum. I’d grant ‘English eccentric’ and ‘flawed and malignant personality’- but when it comes to autism nothing could have been further from our intentions. A moment’s thought about that – given some of the things we’ve done elsewhere in the show – and I’d hope anyone would realise that, if such was indeed our intent, then we’d never engineer such a crass depiction.

DAMIAN: Did you ever have a train set?

RUSS: I did. Hornby. But like South West Trains, I could never get it to run properly.

DAMIAN: Some lovely cultural references again in this episode such as Norborough Station (60s Avengers) but I would have put money on nods to The Signal-man or Brief Encounter – did I miss them?

RUSS: We are ever constrained by what can be delivered. I had wanted to use the original location for The Signalman – but it lay far beyond our reach. ‘Hallo! Below there!’ Brief Encounter… I don’t know if it made the cut – but I’m pretty sure we’ve nodded to ‘taking books back to Boots’ elsewhere.

DAMIAN: I could have understood Bates Motel (indeed, there’s a slight reference: ‘Twenty-four chalets, twenty-four vacancies’) but bloody Crossroads Motel! You’ve given us countless tales that witness your fanaticism for Tony Hancock, Carry On films and The Beatles but why on earth would you even think of paying homage to such a decrepit piece of soap opera history?

RUSS: Damien Timmer is very fond of Crossroads, and was very keen to honour it. Lest we forget, when Miss Diane left Kings Oak, she tipped up in… of all places… a certain city of dreaming spires. Easy to knock, of course — but it once commanded huge audiences, and the viewing nation hung spellbound on the fate of Meg and Sandy and Jill, and all the rest

But as always with Endeavour, one might imagine it to be A Crossroads, rather than necessarily THE Crossroads. We rationalised it – kind of – thus, that once, perhaps, Hazel Adair and Peter Ling had taken a wrong turn on a lonely highway and ended up at our Crossroads, which had in turn inspired them to create their Crossroads.

You are right about Bates Motel, of course. In fact, I think in the original iteration of the script there was an extended night driving sequence for Endeavour before he arrived. Alas, time and budget, and poor man’s process, wait for no man. But I clearly thought it would have been funnier if we’d laid in a longer build-up to the reveal of his destination.

DAMIAN: And a certain Mrs. Turtle is referenced in the script and briefly seen on screen at the reception desk who looked remarkably similar to Ann George. Like Veronica Carlson, please tell me she wasn’t another one of your boyhood crushes?

RUSS: I worked at ATV in Brum for some time in the early 70s — and we would often see the stars from Crossroad in the canteen, or heading into studio. Ann George was quite glamorous in a furs and bling way – but, no, she never caught my imagination in quite the same way as Miss Carlson.

DAMIAN: What can you tell us about the second film of series 6, APOLLO?

RUSS: Er, well — Shaun’s directed it. And a very fine job he’s done, too. William Goldman’s advice was ‘Give the star everything.’ So – I hope the moon will suffice. Seriously – it’s quite spooky the way it worked out. Of all the films in all the series in all the world that he could have directed…

I’m sure I’ll have much more to say about it at a later date, but we were blessed to be joined on this film by Stephen La Riviere and his wonderfully talented team at Century 21. He brought with him some absolute pioneers of British film and television. So, for a couple of days, our pretend past reached out across half a century and joined hands with those who had lived the real thing. It also marks (and will remain) my only onscreen appearance in Endeavour, and proves that sometimes one’s childhood dreams really can come true.

Damian Michael Barcroft

Writer/historian of Detective Fiction and the Victorian Gothic. Also cultural observations and interviews from literature, stage and screen.

Tag Archives: Russell Lewis Endeavour

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