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The Endeavour Archives: SWAY also previewing PREY

NOTE: Please be aware that the following interview contains spoilers for SWAY (S2:03), ARCADIA (S3:02) and episodes of the original Inspector Morse.

THE ENDEAVOUR ARCHIVES: 4KX

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, I’m told. But the lot of a policeman’s wife hardly gets a mention. But while I’ve been out running around, nabbing villains and generally playing silly buggers… the real brains of the outfit has made a house a home, raised two children, our children. Seen ‘em off to school each morning, clean and smart. And somehow, even with all that to do, there’s always been a hot meal for me when I get home. Twenty-five years ago I got the best bit of luck any man ever had. The toast is… my Win.” – THURSDAY

Russell Lewis

An exclusive interview

by Damian Michael Barcroft

Part III:

SWAY

With special thanks to JS Kirstie

~

DAMIAN: Last Sunday we said a sad farewell to Jack Laskey. Should Little Pete ever find himself in Oxford again, would you find a way to write him back in the show?

RUSS:  Jack is a part of the Team Endeavour family forever.  So, naturally, I’d be delighted to see Peter Jakes back in Oxford should the opportunity arise.

In real life – Jack’s playing the lead in a fantastic show which shoots in Canada called Company X – and its production dates cross very heavily with ours.  It was possible for him to shoot the first half of this series, but his representation let us know through Susie – our casting director – that he would not be available going forward.  I was broken hearted to lose him, as we’d barely scratched the surface.  But – happily, he survived! – and you never know..?  Faces from the past have a habit of turning up in Oxford.

sun1044DAMIAN: So SWAY, I really love this film. It’s up there with my absolute favourites FIRST BUS TO WOODSTOCK, HOME and NEVERLAND. We all know that you have mastered the art of the “whodunnit” but like FIRST BUS, SWAY explicitly showcases your ability to juxtapose a detective thriller with beautifully written, character-driven romantic drama. The scenes between Thursday and his old war sweetheart Luisa Armstrong (played to heartbreaking perfection by Cecile Paoli), who haven’t seen each other in twenty years are just devastating. Here’s an example of what I mean:

THURSDAY: We were friends once.
LUISA: That’s the last thing we were. Friendship takes time. What did we have? Two months? Three? If that. There wasn’t room for friendship too.
THURSDAY: Don’t tell me. I was there. I remember everything. Everything. Every moment like nothing before or since. It’s here. Still. Forever. The scent of the pines. The sun on the water. So vivid. And you. All above everything, I remember you.
LUISA: Don’t.
THURSDAY: Your eyes.
LUISA: You can’t say these things. You can’t, not to me.
THURSDAY: I’ve no-one else to say them to.

sun1025sun1024sun1024a“I’ve no-one else to say them to” – still brings a tear to my eye! Of course, all this is particularly heartbreaking since Thursday and wife Win are about to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary! Aside from all the blood and guts, are you a bit of an old softy really?

RUSS:  Well – thanks.  I’m delighted you liked SWAY.  I’m very fond of it too. I once worked in an old fashioned department store, and I suppose Burridges grew out of that.

sun1049There’s also a terrific Avengers story ‘Death at Bargain Prices’ – from 1965, I think — that has Steed and Mrs.Peel going undercover at a big London department store; which – though heightened in dramatic terms, and a pretty long way from Endeavourland, was a great spur visually.

However, it was the Carry On team, and Norman Wisdom, I had in mind when I was putting it together.  I just wondered what would happen if you recast those almost stock characters // archetypes, and played them straight – rather than for comedy.  ‘Carry On Strangling.’

In my mind at least there was as much of Kenneth Connor’s frustrated ‘Phwoarrr!’ underpinning Joey Lisk as there was Michael Caine’s ‘Alfie’.  You can probably cast the rest with the remaining Carry On stalwarts yourself.

sun1042Anyway, there’s something about such places out of hours – when you’re doing a late night stock-take, say, or laying out stuff for a new display, or a sale – when most of the lights are out, and the escalators have been turned off…  The manikins in shadow…

sun1049aThat was my one regret about SWAY – no escalators!  But, swings and roundabouts…  And the really exciting thing (for a geek like me) is that the location we used for Burridges is the same store that appears in the opening scenes of the Boulting Brothers’ ‘TWISTED NERVE’ – with Hywel Bennett and Haley Mills…

And this is where it all all gets a bit Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  Because, it was Bernard Hermann who composed the grating whistling theme to ‘TWISTED NERVE’ — that Quentin Tarantino later rolled out in Kill Bill.  From Bernard Hermann it’s but a step to his frequent collaborator Mr.Hitchcock.  And the whole thing comes full circle via FRENZY through Billie Whitelaw and (good old Bob Rusk himself) Barry Foster, who both appear in TWISTED NERVE. The necktie strangler was clearly a cousin of the stocking killer.  And back to Morse via Barry Foster in ‘The Last Enemy’.  So…

sun1054By the way — Le Minou Noir was a gift of Camille Gatin’s – Producer on Series II — who, as you probably guessed, is French.   I think I’d originally gone for Le Chat Noir as a brand name – but we couldn’t clear it.  Though the logo survived.

An old softy?  I don’t know.  I suspect a natural aptitude for cruelty would be closer to the mark.

DAMIAN: If Luisa, after the “Fredo, hold me. Once. For what we were” moment hadn’t have told Thursday never to come back, would he have continued to see her in secret?

RUSS: “The ‘what if’ game’s no good to any bugger.”  I know what I think, but I wouldn’t want to be prescriptive.

sun1021asun1021sun1020DAMIAN: There’s a lovely moment in which Thursday gently touches Luisa’s hair as they part from their final embrace. Was this scripted or an improvisation from Roger?

RUSS:  I don’t think it was scripted.  It might have been a suggestion of Andy’s – the director – but it’s just as likely to have been something improvised by Roger.

He likewise improvised the front end of Thursday’s farewell speech to Jakes at the pub in ARCADIA – the one that invokes all the Cowboy film titles.  That was all Rog.  And rather marvellous it was too.   They were light on dialogue on the floor to cover a camera move that Bryn had in mind, and for some reason couldn’t reach me or Sam Costin – so…  Cometh the hour — cometh the Allam.

DAMIAN: Another gem of a moment occurs shortly afterwards. Thursday returns home, hangs up the hat and coat and just stares silently at himself in the mirror. Mrs Thursday offers him stew and dumplings and he looks away from the mirror and at her – a moment – but what was he thinking?

RUSS:  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…

sun1018sun1019sun1019aHere’s this young man from cold grey old England and he finds himself literally parachuted in to this country of colour, dazzling sunlight and heat.  Sights, smells, tastes unlike anything he’s ever experienced before.  He’s living on his wits – death at his shoulder.  Hunted.  Running with the partisans.  Jeeping one step ahead of those who would kill him.  Aware that each day could be his last.  And he’s got Luisa working with him…

They were young.  Love and death.  Two faces on the coin of life.  The heart chooses.  I felt it made him human.  Had he known that she survived the massacre, he might never had come back to England.  But he didn’t – and so he came back and picked up the threads of his life. Made a go of it.  And it’s been a good life.  Win, and Joan and Sam.

sun1031I think that the realisation is there when he looks into the mirror.  This is who he is.

And it ties in to a warning from the Code that was drummed into us as kids when the 5th of November rolled around – “NEVER RETURN TO A FIREWORK ONCE LIT.”  Which was all of a piece with everything else that was going on in the story.  Strange on Patrol in civvies.  Endeavour and Nurse Hicks at the bus-stop, etc.

DAMIAN: Was Luisa’s fate always that which occurred on screen or were there other possibilities in your mind?

RUSS: (WARNING!  INSPECTOR MORSE SPOILERS FOLLOW!) No – it was always going to be a tragic ending.  The jumping off point was DEAD ON TIME – and the Morse/Susan Fallon axis. Lewis finding the cassette tape – and disposing of it.  I thought it might be interesting to turn that coat inside out – and make it Thursday who had the romantic history with a suspect.

sun1015In early drafts of SWAY, I think right up until the readthrough draft – ENDEAVOUR kept the contents of Luisa’s letter from THURSDAY.  Shielded him from the pain it contained.  As with Lewis and the cassette tape.  But Shaun wasn’t comfortable with that.  He didn’t feel he had the right to keep something like that from Thursday.  And so the final few scenes were rejigged to the version we went with.

SUN1014ADAMIAN: I don’t think I’ve seen Cecile in anything before, how did she come to be cast in the part?

RUSS:  Cecile was brought in by Susie Pariss.  And if you ever watched Bergerac you will certainly have seen her.  She was terrific.  Thought she invested the whole thing with great dignity and extraordinary depths of hidden sorrow.

sun1022DAMIAN: I understand that there is a cast read-through for all the scripts before filming begins, what was the reaction to the first draft of SWAY, particularly from Roger Allam?

RUSS:  I think Roger was pleased with it.  Something ‘meaty’ – as he’d describe it — for him to get his teeth into.  Read-throughs are typically our last chance to tinker with the script before its issued as a Shooting Draft.  They usually take place at the front end of the week between shoots – and I have until Friday to turn around any late thoughts or changes arising from the read.  Sometimes it’ll be a production thing – a location or a scheduling issue that’s not going to work for us.  But we always have the Network in attendance, and they point up any plot or dialogue things they’re not happy with – and likewise with Shaun and Rog.  We read the script through, then hunker down for a couple of post mortems.  One with the broadcaster – line changes, etc., points of contention – and then one with the boys.  The director sits in on both.

DAMIAN: Was there ever a conscious decision either by yourself or Roger that there should be a very Thursday-heavy film that explored his past in such detail?

RUSS:  Yeh – I’d wanted to see a bit more of Thursday’s past life.  It had been kicking around in the back of my head even on Series I – and I think I’d mentioned it to Rog even then.   I thought it would be interesting if we muddied the water a bit.  Filled in some of the blanks.   I like characters that are carrying some baggage.   Some folk got a bit cross about it – and thought his involvement with Luisa diminished him in some way.  I didn’t.  Clearly.

I think I mentioned previously – I didn’t want Endeavour – as a character — to be some sort of sexless, neutered, teenybopper fantasy that just held hands and recited Baudelaire over buttered muffins.  And it was the same with Thursday.  He’s lived a life.

SUN1014DAMIAN: As straight as a die. Decent. Unafraid. Those are your words to describe DI Fred Thursday. You once told me that you have known people with his qualities, could you tell us who they were please?

RUSS:  My old man – principally.  Fred Thursday’s war bears a more than passing resemblance to his.  Others of his class and generation.  His brothers.  Mining stock from the Valleys of South Wales.  Some great-uncles on my maternal side who fought in the Great War.  Lancashire Pals.  Signed up under-age.  Out of the mill and into the trenches.

sun1026DAMIAN: There’s a piece of music that plays throughout SWAY including a scene between Thursday and Luisa and the when Huggins tries to strangle his final victim. It took me a while to place it but I went through my John Barry collection and realized it was very similar to his music score for The Ipcress File. Is this an original piece by Barrington and if so, the Barry influence can’t be a coincidence surely?

RUSS:  I haven’t seen it since it was broadcast.  But Barrington’s not much minded to pastiche, so it seems unlikely.  I’m not sure if you’re talking about the ‘record’ that the killer puts on.  In the UK transmission that was Dean Martin’s version of ‘SWAY’ from which the story took its title, but we couldn’t get clearance for the International version, and that includes DVD and iTunes versions – so, it was substituted…  I’m pretty sure it was a library piece.

DAMIAN: Well, the piano has stopped and the beer has run dry, please tell us what you can about tonight’s film, PREY…

RUSS:   Hmm.  Past and future brush shoulders.  To which end I’m indebted to our Line Producer Helga Dowie for making sure we had the right location.  There’s a very loose connection to Joss Bixby’s ‘Belvedere Set’.  It’s quite a pastoral piece.  Not much more I can tell you on this one.   Except of course…  be afraid.

EndeavourPREY~

Every life holds one great love. One name to hold onto at the end. One face to take into the dark…
– Luisa Armstrong

1008Interview copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2016

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The Endeavour Archives: NOCTURNE also previewing ARCADIA

THE ENDEAVOUR ARCHIVES #7

Russell Lewis

An exclusive interview

by Damian Michael Barcroft

~

With thanks to Hilary Bray

Camille Pleyel

and Wynnie Stoan

~

SO, last week I was telling you about the eleventh day of shooting and the first on location in Oxford for Series 3 – Film 1: RIDE. You’ll forgive me if I didn’t go into too much detail for fear of spoilers but I hope to rectify that now the episode has been broadcast.

Radcliffe Square was the first of the day’s three location shoots. Rehearsals and sound checks etc. were all well underway by the time I got there at 08:22. Remarkably, considering the scene only lasts just over two minutes in the final cut that you will have seen last Sunday, it took until 10:43 to get the required footage. But then, despite the promise of spring (12 April 2015), it was bloody cold and windy – so much so that they had to stop filming because Shaun’s eyes were watering. Indeed, I don’t think I ever expected to see Endeavour Morse jogging on the spot outside the Bodleian to keep warm.

However, in addition to the weather, cast and crew had to contend with various obstacles including unruly cyclists and a particularly angry delivery man – all determined on making a cameo appearance. It is testament to the good natured family atmosphere enjoyed by both cast and crew that they all remained so humorous and patient – although, since I’m posting this on a Sunday, I won’t reveal what Roger said when confronted by a group of snap-happy tourists hell-bent on a selfie or two.

Needless to say, a lot of cheese and pickle sandwiches were eaten that morning. Anyway, more of this later. I’ve also included a full transcript of the scene in question at the end of the following interview as there is a particularly lovely moment between Endeavour and Thursday which was sadly cut from the final edit. For now though, here’s the second part of an exclusive interview as we continue to explore series two while offering the odd glimpse of tonight’s film…

1052Part II:

NOCTURNE

DAMIAN: As with FUGUE (S1:02), the second film of series two also happens to be a horror/thriller story. Will tonight’s film ARCADIA continue the trend for series three?

RUSS:  The short answer is no.  There was a request to shake the Selection Box a little this time out — so that we didn’t get too predictable.  There is an ‘ENDEAVOUR does… (insert genre here)’ film amongst the four, but we have swapped the order around a little.

1100DAMIAN: We talked about your love of horror in one of our interviews last year and there are so many references again in NOCTURNE but would it be fair to say that THE INNOCENTS (1961), the work of M. R. James’ and the seventies GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS were particular inspirations for the mood and tone of this film?

RUSS:  All of those things.  PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK came up a bit too — in my discussions with the Director, such as they were.

1056DAMIAN: While we were doing our interview prior to the broadcast of NOCTURNE, you mentioned that the actual backstory regarding the Victorian murders sprang from a loose personal connection with the murder of Francis Saville Kent and an affectionate tribute to Dan McCulloch (producer of series one), could you elaborate on this please?

RUSS:  In the late 70s, I worked on a BBC dramatisation of the Constance Kent case which was shot in the West Country – as near as damn it to the original locations.  If I remember right – the cast had an anniversary supper – on the evening of the murder.

I suppose we were down there two to three months — across the summer.  Staying in various hotels.  One in the Quantocks had a touch of Fawlty Towers about it.  Not in the service – but in the 70s atmos.  Public telephone in the hallway – with a ‘hood’ for privacy!  This was an England where a glass of orange juice was often offered as a ‘Starter’.

Fawlty Towers’ ‘The Wedding Party’ with the flirty French guest who goes out in an evening to sample the delights of Torquay..?  Mad, but there’s something about the still, summer-night blackness beyond the entrance that absolutely nails what this hotel was like.

One of the locations we used was a house owned by a Headmaster at some school or other — I can’t remember where exactly — and, though a much smaller building, that had a feel of Shrive Hill House.  While the crew were filming outside, I had an explore of the servants’ quarters and attic.  It stuck in my head, and provided the jumping off point for Endeavour exploring the upper floors of Blythe Mount.

The tribute to Dan…    Well, he’s a Home Counties boy — and Dorking has some very pertinent personal associations for him.  It was a tease — the notion that he might end his days a hopeless rummy in a rooming house there.  In truth, I can think of no future for him that would be less likely.

1054DAMIAN: Morse tells us that “this place [Shrive Hill House/Blythe Mount School for Girls] is like a honeycomb; backstairs and concealed corridors…” which instantly reminded me of Poe, particularly the Corman film version of The Fall of the House of Usher (1960). While there’s an abundance of gothic elements and nods to the genre (note the Hammer Horror double-bill that gives Strange “the proper willies”) in some of your scripts, I thought that NOCTURNE, unlike FUGUE, was similar to The Hound of the Baskervilles in that it takes a detective famous for their logic and deductive reasoning and places them in an apparently supernatural setting which almost stretches the conventions of Morse to bursting point. While I, and I’m sure other “connoisseurs of the macabre”, loved every moment, were there any concerns that the audience might find it a little too Scooby-Doo?

RUSS:  I suppose it may have been a stretch for some, but I hoped we’d built up enough trust with the audience over the preceding films that they’d go with us.  Probably just me trying to have my penny and my bun.  But – for all the ghostly bells and whistles — we did try to play fair by the rules of the whodunit.

It’s interesting that you reference The Fall of the House of Usher.  Though Blythe Mount didn’t crumble into the tarn, in the original, early drafts of NOCTURNE, the school went up a raging blaze – Endeavour hunting for Bunty and the killer through the smoke and flames; an ending like so many Hammer Horrors – but, the director wasn’t keen.  So…

1055DAMIAN: Who is your favourite screen Sherlock Holmes by the way?

RUSS:  Oh – that’s hard.  Benedict Cumberbatch is doing great work, of course.  A Sherlock for the 21st century.  Modern and thrilling.

Perhaps it’s like the Doctor – every generation has its own Sherlock.  For someone of my years… Jeremy Brett is hard to trump.  One of Paget’s illustrations sprung to life.  I did see him and Edward Hardwicke do The Secret of Sherlock Holmes on stage, which was rather wonderful. But I remember when the first of the series went to air – JB’s brilliance notwithstanding, it was David Burke’s Watson that was the real great leap forward.  They redefined the relationship – after decades of a kind of ‘received’ performance from the what-what-what? school of Watson, David Burke restored his dignity.

Basil Rathbone was the Sherlock I grew up with as a kid, with the movies on re-run, so I’ve a great fondness for his portrayal.  That would have been the first Sherlock that properly registered with me.  Peter Cushing was terrific.

Blasphemous, perhaps, so say it softly, but I thought Robert Downey Jnr & Jude Law made a pretty decent fist of it in the two Guy Richie movies.  Jared Harris was a corking Moriarty.  And Eddie Marsan’s Lestrade…  On screen for all too brief a time, but not a second of it wasted.  But then Eddie Marsan’s work always has such integrity.  I don’t think he’s ever played a false moment.  You know – like Edmund Reid, or Fred Abberline – one didn’t become a Detective Inspector in Late Victorian London by being dull-witted.  I think you really feel that with Eddie Marsan’s portrayal.  That he could handle himself – intellectually and physically.

Nicol Williamson was interesting in The Seven Per Cent Solution, but a bit of a stressful watch. Hard to take your eyes off Alan Arkin’s Sigmund Freud, though.  Hard to take your eyes off Alan Arkin in anything.  Weirdly enough – it was Arkin’s turn in ‘Wait Until Dark’ I had in mind for the photographer in TROVE.  That sort of Paul Simon ‘do’?  A sort of… French Crop, is it?  But, sadly – the look fell by the wayside.

However…  ‘favourite’ Holmes…  I have a very special place in my heart for Christopher Plummer’s turn in Murder By Decree.  James Mason also gives a hugely entertaining old school Watson.  ‘You squashed my pea!’

Of course, like From Hell — it shadows the late Stephen Knight’s now much discredited hypothesis.  But the yarn spun, and the supporting cast…  Frank Finlay’s Lestrade; Donald Sutherland’s Robert Lees; Sir Anthony Quayle, Sir John Gielgud, and a cracking turn by David Hemmings…  together with a suitably creepy score and cracking production values, makes for an altogether irresistible two hours.   Great opening model shot of London skyline too.  If you haven’t seen it…  Great fun!

But he’s crime fiction’s answer to Hamlet, isn’t he?  It’s quite possible that the greatest Holmes may not have been born yet.

DAMIAN: I loved the moment when the author of “Plighted Cunning: An account of the Blaise-Hamilton murders”, Stephen Fitzowen (splendid Desmond Barrit), bangs on the door of the school and says in a very Lionel Grisbane sort of way, “Good Evening” which I almost expected him to follow with “I have returned…”. Was there a particular model for the character or an actor in mind to play him as you wrote the part?

RUSS:  Yeh – Desmond was great.  I think the stage direction in the shooting script featured an exterior establishing shot – which was Fitzowen getting out of a taxi, and framed in a halo of light from a lamp by the door – portable recording equipment in hand, standing in for Max Von Sydow’s suitcase.  But in the end – for scheduling reasons — this was never shot.

That whole sequence was intended to take place on a dark and stormy night.  Thunder. Lightning.  If you’re going to embrace the tropes..?  All or nothing at all.  But, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t convince the director to get behind it.  C’est la guerre.

1030The character was a nod to Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse – which featured a writer Owen Fitzstephan right at the heart of proceedings.   There was an adaptation of this in the 70s with James Coburn as ‘Ham Nash’, the Gumshoe; and everyone’s favourite troubled Jesuit — Jason Miller — as Fitzstephan (which was another happy connection.)

My memory is a dented and wonky sieve, but I think Fitzowen was originally several characters; including a trio of academics with an interest in parapsychology.  I don’t think I went as far as naming them Venkman, Spengler & Stanz, but that’s certainly what I was drawing on.  Just a bit of fun.  Seeing how they played out as dramatic characters, rather than comedic ones.  Sadly – due to space and budget – they ended up biting the bullet, and some of their material was grafted on to Fitzowen.

1036But he was a type, more than anything…  A touch of Ronnie Barker’s ‘Magnificent Evans’ in there.  Maybe even a bit of Ed Reardon.  Some of that… Neil Oliver is it?  The TV historian?  Some of that Celtic ‘WhooOOOOoo!’ in the delivery.  A chap, one suspects, who could invest even the most commonplace occurrence with a suggestion of the fey folk at work or the Gods at dice.  I’d love to hear him order breakfast.

It was a bit of a pig for poor old Des – especially the magic lantern show, which featured hideous amounts of unadulterated plot-spiel.  Lines like that are very difficult to get down – as there’s nothing to play off.  No cues.  But he did it wonderfully.

103310341035DAMIAN: Once again, this film features a plethora of cultural references including, in addition to those already mentioned, Lewis Carroll, Ian Fleming, Philip Larkin, Charles Perrault, P. G. Wodehouse and John Wyndham to name but a few. At what point do these occur to you, is it through the research and writing stage or do they forever reside within your consciousness rather like Simonides’ method of loci?

RUSS:  Mostly just flotsam and jetsam swilling around the cloaca maxima that serves for a mind.

DAMIAN: And is Plighted Cunning simply a reference to King Lear and, if so, was this used because of the story, like NOCTURNE, concerns themes of betrayal and justice regarding a father’s fortune?

RUSS:  I think – because I was drawing on the Murder at Rode (Road) Hill House – that I was trying to find a title that had an echo of Cruelly Murdered by Bernard Taylor.   That and Yseult Bridges’ The Saint With Red Hands – were our two main guidebooks to the case.  I think I was just trying to come up with a title that a rather florid character such as Fitzowen might have used, and it seemed to chime.  The Queens of the Golden Age plundered Shakespeare, so it felt right and fitting to follow their example.  One of those three in the morning decisions that’s hard to accurately recall after such a passage of time.

DAMIAN: I know you’re fond of walking, to what extent have your adventures manifested themselves into your scripts such as the Domesday Book (TROVE) and Holmwood Park Sanitorium (NOCTURNE) for example?

RUSS:  Quite a bit, I suppose.  You do see some odd things.  Long abandoned vehicles in unlikely places.   The caravans in NEVERLAND came from one I’d seen in a state of advanced disintegration.  It was on a regular route – and, over a couple of years, I just watched this thing gradually disappear.  Actually, when I first saw it, the caravan looked rather like the mobile home at the start of THEM!  Torn open.  Thankfully no fifteen foot ants came whiffling out of the tulgey wood.  But yes – I’m a sucker for the atmosphere of such places.

Holmwood Park first put in an appearance in LEWIS – Falling Darkness – and it seemed fun to fold it back into ENDEAVOUR in some way.  I think I read somewhere, or someone told me, about a place like Holmwood Park, not too far from Oxford, where undergrads that had burnt-out sometimes ended up.  A kind of proto-Priory.  Quite a lot of derelict medical facilities out there.  Nature reclaiming buildings.  Creeping decay.  Ruin.  Damp.  Fungi.  And there’s definitely a sense of frozen in aspic about some of them.  Time stopped.  Some of the larger sites – the staff social areas – clubs and canteens.  Press your nose up against the window and you can see cabinets still filled with old Darts trophies – shields and cups.  Round Robin Tennis fixtures – decades out of date.  Fantastic.

DAMIAN: There are close-ups of “Plighted Cunning” in NOCTURNE and we regularly see various shots of articles and clippings from The Oxford Mail. Given their detail and relevance to the plots, who actually writes these?

RUSS:  Sam Costin creates the text for these – and he’s an absolute genius at it.

10421041DAMIAN: Where are all the props such as Plighted Cunning and the autographed Rosalind Calloway LP (from FIRST BUS TO WOODSTOCK) stored?

RUSS:  In various prop-houses and storage facilities.

DAMIAN: How was Chopin’s Nocturne chosen?

RUSS:  It’s a favourite.  They’re all terrific, but something about the one we went with seemed to my ear even more eerie than its fellows.  And I thought if we could put that on a musical box…

DAMIAN: We talked about film noir last week so I was intrigued to discover there is actually a 1946 George Raft movie in that genre called Nocturne! – were you aware of this or is it just a coincidence?

RUSS:  It is just a coincidence.

DAMIAN: There are some lovely moments between Morse and Joan Thursday (Sara Vickers) and there has been an obvious attraction and chemistry between the two since the first series. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see them destined for a bit of slap and tickle or perhaps I should say a bit of how’s your father?

RUSS:   It’s an interesting relationship.  And the chemistry is rather lovely to watch.  I do know exactly how it’s going to evolve, but more than that…  I can’t say.

1049DAMIAN: Another scene which I adore was between Morse and Max after the young girl Maud Ashenden is murdered. Max says to Morse, “Adults, one takes the rough with the smooth. But this… you find this piece of work, Morse. You find whoever did that. For me, all right? You find them…”. An absolutely beautiful moment in which Morse expresses sympathy but also genuine surprise at Max’s unusual lamentation for a corpse. Was this purely because it was a child’s death or were there possibly hints that there might be other reasons that it resonated with Max to such an extent?

RUSS:  I thought it would be nice to see another side of Max.  The typically sanguine and unflappable pathologist undone by the brutal ruin wrought upon poor Maudie.  And Jimmy Bradshaw played it – as always — to perfection.  I don’t have a lot of room to cast as much light as I’d like to upon those most intimately involved with Endeavour – mainly for reasons of time, and the demands of unspooling the plot, but I hope I can give some clues here and there as to what makes them tick.  Nice for the actors to have something to play, rather than simply offering ‘just the facts, ma’am.’

1046aDAMIAN: In the absence of you actually telling us anything about tonight’s film ARCADIA, can you please say something clever and cryptic instead?

RUSS:   Well, we’ve done the Manufactory; the Department Store; and so this is – to some small degree – our ‘Ladybird Book of the Supermarket.’ A key player from Morse’s later adventures puts in an appearance.  And we touch on Endeavour’s childhood connection to Quakerism.  One door opens…

ARCADIA~~~

101. EXT. OXFORD LOCATION PARK BENCH [Radcliffe Square] – DAY 5

ENDEAVOUR and THURSDAY.

ENDEAVOUR: Didn’t you say that was Harry Rose’s business?

THURSDAY: Slots? In part. Harry Rose has been at it since the Devil was in short trousers. Oh — and it’s definitely Bixby by the way. Dr.deBryn was able to match his prints to a number of latents taken from the house. (digs out sandwiches) Right.

ENDEAVOUR: You’ve seen them? Cheese and pickle. The Belboroughs?

THURSDAY: All bar the tennis player. She stayed at the Randolph. The rest haven’t got a decent alibi between them for Bixby. Though your mate Anthony Donn says he was with Belborough the night Jeannie was killed. (a moment) You really think there’s a connection between Harry Rose and this bloke at the shooting gallery?

ENDEAVOUR: Maybe. I don’t know. I’m just stumbling around.

THURSDAY: What you’re good at.

THURSDAY eats his sandwich – watches the world go by.

ENDEAVOUR: The first week I hardly slept. I didn’t know if I was going to be found hanged from the bars of the cell, or take a dive from the top walk. (off Thursday) Every night I expected to hear boots on the landing – the key in the lock – but nobody came by. A month. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. That was the worst of it. No. Not quite. The worst was… Knowing it was my fault.

THURSDAY — appalled.

ENDEAVOUR: (CONT’D) I was too slow. My stupidity nearly left Mrs.Thursday a widow, and…

The thought is too much for him.

THURSDAY: I knew walking in to Blenheim Vale that I might not walk out. (That’s) The job, I suppose. Something bad like that? Sometimes you’ve to put all you are against all they’ve got. It was my decision. And I’d do it again without a second thought. Don’t ever blame yourself.

ENDEAVOUR: If I’d been quicker off the mark…

THURSDAY: You were there at the end. Nobody else. You had the chance to run. To look to your own neck. But you didn’t. You stood. A pinch like that, it’s not brain that counts. It’s guts. I won’t forget it. Ever. (a moment) You should eat something. You don’t eat enough. Here.

THURSDAY offers the other half of his sandwich. A moment — ENDEAVOUR takes it. Just two men, sharing a sandwich.

12/04/15 08:22 Setting up for the first location shoot for RIDE @ Damian Michael Barcroft

12/04/15 08:22 Setting up for the first location shoot for RIDE

Excuse the quality of some of these photos - I was cold too, shivering and my fingers not working.

Excuse the quality of some of these photos – I was cold too, shivering and my fingers not working.

Location2: Market Square

Location2: Market Square (11-13:50)

You just see the director, Sandra Goldbacher, in between Roger and Jack Laskey

You can just see the director, Sandra Goldbacher, in between Roger and Jack Laskey

Location 3: Just outside Shirburn Castle, Waltlington, Oxon

Location 3: Just outside Shirburn Castle, Waltlington, Oxon

e15

Filming began 16:32 and wrapped 18:30. A splendid day was had by all.

Interview and photos copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2016

All other images copyright © itv/Mammoth Screen

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The Endeavour Archives: TROVE also previewing RIDE

THE ENDEAVOUR ARCHIVES #47A

Interview copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2016

Images copyright © itv/Mammoth Screen

Russell Lewis

An exclusive interview

by Damian Michael Barcroft

With thanks to:

Anthony Aloysius St John

Sam Costin

& George Gathercole

PROLOGUE:

‘BACK TO WORK’

12 APRIL 2015: It’s early Sunday morning and my special “K” and I are driving through Oxford. For me, having never visited before, but knowing the city so well from literature, film and, of course, television, it’s a surreal and dreamlike experience. To give you an inkling of my exhilaration, we pass The Eagle and Child where I like to imagine J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis still sitting there conversing over drinks in the Rabbit Room. And, speaking of rabbits, who can explore Oxford without thinking of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the Liddell family? However, I’m not writing on behalf of the Oxford Tourist Board, and if I mention our excitement as we also drive past the Randolph Hotel, it might serve to tip the reader that I’m here on police business and I’ll surely get to the point sooner rather than later.

Today is the eleventh day of shooting for the first film of Endeavour series three but the first on location in Oxford. I arrive at Unit Base where the cast and crew have set up camp for the duration of the Oxford shoot. It’s neither glittering nor glamorous, indeed, it is after all, just a car park and one may be forgiven for believing they are about to witness the setting up of a car boot sale for the day rather than the production of a major ITV drama. However, there are one or two clues that I’m in the right place: a vintage AEC Renown double-decker bus circa 1967 (reg. FWL 371E) and just behind it, various location vehicles and trailers – some of which brandish the likeness of the Mammuthus primigenius.

It is now precisely 08:00 and I meet script editor Sam Costin who is enjoying his breakfast until I disturb him (Sam has script edited every single Endeavour film thus far and really does know where the bodies are buried!). As we make our way to Radcliffe Square, the first of the day’s three locations, Sam asks me if Russ has told me anything about today’s shoot. No. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t ask although it was obvious what he was referring to and surely everyone who’d seen the shocking events of the series two grand finale was wondering the same thing.

Both Sam and K smile. In trying to take everything in, I must be the last to notice and can’t see the wood for the trees – an army of technicians and artists: art department and props, assistant directors, cameramen, grip, sound and make-up (hello Irene!) all busy blocking my view until magically disappearing as rehearsals come to an end and cameras roll…

Oxford’s finest back to work. And I was too! Last year I had the privilege of interviewing the writer and executive producer of Endeavour, Russell Lewis, to discuss all the films from the pilot up to the end of series one. I’m very pleased and proud that these exclusive interviews will continue as we explore the second series while offering the odd peek into what to expect from the third

12/04/15 08:22 Setting up for the first location shoot for RIDE @ Damian Michael Barcroft

12/04/15 08:22 Setting up for the first location shoot for RIDE © Damian Michael Barcroft

© Damian Michael Barcroft

© Damian Michael Barcroft

PART I:

‘TROVE’

DAMIAN: Russ, the first series was broadcast between 14 April – 5 May 2013 and the second from 30 March – 20 April 2014. Why has series three taken so long to reach the screens?

RUSS:  Blame the World Cup.  Rio 2014 knocked the TV schedule out of shape, and meant we weren’t able to go into our usual production/broadcast slot.  So – you’ll have to excuse me if my recollections are even more unreliable than usual.  Production began on Series II almost three years ago now – and I would have started writing them even before that.  Apologies in advance.

DAMIAN: How did Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor help inspire the story for Trove?

RUSS: They took part in an OUDS [Oxford University Dramatic Society] production of Marlowe’s ‘DOCTOR FAUSTUS’ – and the Oxford City Police were charged with looking after them. Early drafts had Strange and Jakes on protection duty – making sure nobody ran off with Elizabeth Taylor’s diamond ring.  The opening sequence was intercut with the play in performance. ‘Stipendium peccati, mors est.’  I’d planned to have Endeavour trading Shakespearean quotations with Burton in the pub, but given when we shot, we just couldn’t make the timeline fit convincingly. DOCTOR FAUSTUS was on in… February, I think – and we weren’t shooting until Spring.  Leaves on trees, etc.  So… It had to go. But, the theme of the play, the notion of an unholy bargain – what price a soul? — survived.

DAMIAN: There’s a visual reference of their visit to Oxford that still survives the cut?

RUSS: When the Barbara Batten by-election posters go up, you might just glimpse a Playbill on the wall…

DAMIAN: It must have been a painful tug on the old purse strings to open the series with a parade through Oxford celebrating 900 years since our islands fell beneath the Norman Yoke, what were the logistics of closing Broad Street and were there a few raised eyebrows from the money men?

RUSS: They weren’t too highly raised. The Mammoths wanted something eye-catching for the opening. And 1066 to 1966 seemed too happy a coincidence to ignore. Probably all the rest of it – the Wolvercote Horde, etc., was spun from that. 1966 seemed to be very much about Britain re-assessing its identity, and its place in the world. A touch of Neo-Victorianism/Edwardianism for the Dedicated Followers of Fashion.  Adam Adamant Lives!

We shot on a Sunday, so as not to disrupt Oxford too much.  We had a good number of supporting artistes, but – as with the crowd scenes in ROCKET — a lot of it is smoke and mirrors.

1308DAMIAN: So it’s May 1966. Four months have passed since the end of series one in which Morse has been “counting paperclips at County” and Thursday has a spring in his step as Morse finally returns to Oxford City Police. How much of this episode, or indeed the whole of series two, existed in your mind as you wrote the final draft of HOME and what, if anything, changed along the way?

RUSS: When we got to the end of Series 1, we didn’t know if there would be a Series 2. We never do. It’s all about the figures. I think we got the official word from the Network quite some time after HOME went out. I suspect I had some of it in mind. I’m afraid that isn’t a terribly helpful or illuminating answer. It’s just difficult to recall after such a passage of time. I’m sure three years doesn’t sound very long, but TROVE is eight films ago. These things occupy every waking thought for the duration of production, but as soon as it’s done I’m afraid most of it tends to get wiped from the memory banks to make room for the next.  Either that or the mind tends to forget pain! Perhaps we should do our Series 3 Q&A when we get to the end of this one!

But, for what it’s worth, I think – should we come back for a Series 4, and assuming stuff doesn’t get vetoed – that I’ve already got all the stories for that run, and possibly the one after, already fairly well nailed down.  Which is probably tempting fate, and now we’ll be ignominiously cancelled and cast into outer darkness.

1313DAMIAN: While discussing the story arc for the first series in one of our previous interviews, you said that you absolutely know how Endeavour will end and that the final scene is actually already written. You also stated that you have certain key points mapped out for all the major characters. I’m wondering if that end is still the same and if any of the aforementioned key points appeared in series two?

RUSS: Certainly – I’ve got the way-points mapped out. And the end is still the same. Series 2 – what were the way-points? Well – Morse & Monica. A ‘proper’ relationship. The first glimpse of the Brotherhood. Thursday’s past – which I’m sure we’ll get to when we look at SWAY. Some have made this new series. Others haven’t. There was one reveal that was written for this series, but which, in the end, we couldn’t schedule. It’ll keep. Other things…  some of the events in this series were decided by things happening off-screen – artistes’ availability in the main. Again – blame FIFA.

09520951DAMIAN: Strange takes his Sergeant’s exam at the end of series one and the viewer could be forgiven for thinking that he was on his way to becoming the Chief Superintendent we know and love from the original series. However, you quickly establish that he failed by “three lousy points” early in TROVE. Was this the original plan or did you reconsider his timeline and think it was too early for his first promotion?

RUSS: No – it was the original plan. More of which will be revealed… It would have been too easy – and too obvious – to have Strange take the Exam at the end of Series 1, and attain his stripes – purely on merit — by Series 2. The scene between Strange and Endeavour in the pub – a man can’t serve two masters – was key, really.

1318DAMIAN: We’ve spoken at length about the influence of and your passion for the horror genre in the past with particular reference to FUGUE. In TROVE however, there were a few moments in which I was reminded of the old noir films and literature such as the work of Chandler, Hammett and the Bogie movies but was there the particular and more British influence of Graham Greene and his Brighton Rock or The Third Man in mind while writing TROVE?

RUSS: It was very much ENDEAVOUR does noir. So far as we can. It’s something I’ve tried – with various degrees of success and failure – to nod to across the show, as it’s a genre of which I’m hugely fond. The lonesome highway with the gas station/motel is pure Americana. Equal parts Hopper and James M Cain. I think the original stage directions had a fizzing neon sign, and Jim Reeves on the Jukebox/Radio… but in the end… Budget.

1320The thing with a straight whodunit is that it can teeter over into becoming just a dry puzzle – a mental exercise with very little heart or emotional heft.  “Where were you on the night in question?”  And that’s fine if you’ve got a grey afternoon with a Golden Age novel – you can go back and forth, flicking through the pages, checking out a character’s alibi, seeing if their story stands up – but for something you’re watching, it’s got to have – for me at least – some kind of drive and forward momentum.  It’s got to be ABOUT something. It’s got to have a story.

13251327As for Graham Greene…  I’d be very pleased if anything we did came within hailing distance of his greatness. The Third Man is a touchstone – Roger Allam is a massive fan too.  It wasn’t Rosalind Calloway by accident.

But yes – I was after a very noir feel with TROVE – the world of the Private Eye; untrustworthy cops; dodgy show-business types, &c..

Roger in search of Harry Lime!

Roger in search of Harry Lime!

DAMIAN: Morse tells us he doesn’t vote in this episode but I wonder if you’re ever tempted, after a glass of Blue Nun perhaps, to infuse any of the characters in Endeavour with your own personal politics?

RUSS: Alas, no Nuns for me – Blue, Red, Singing or otherwise.  I suppose all the characters, stories, etc., are infused to some degree.

DAMIAN: If there was one disappointment I had with this series, it was that I was sorry not to see more of Morse’s flat from the first series. It was dank, melancholy and a little oppressive – very Miss Havisham but on a budget and perfect for young Morse. Why did you decide that it was important for him to be in new lighter and more spacious digs for series two?

RUSS:  I think it was principally a matter of logistics/location availability.  But also, I needed him to be somewhere he could run into Monica across the hallway. And I don’t think we had that option in his first place. There’s an ebb and flow in Endeavour’s fortunes. Sometimes he’s ahead.  As often as not, he’s behind. One thing that didn’t make the cut in Series 2 was the notion that his father had left quite considerable gambling debts – and that Endeavour was paying them off out of his wages, a bit at a time.  However – it does get a bit of a nod this time out.

0956DAMIAN: Apart from Adele Cecil (Judy Loe) in the Inspector Morse episodes Death Is Now My Neighbour and The Wench Is Dead, Nurse Monica “with a moped” Hicks (Shvorne Marks) is the only other onscreen and ongoing relationship for Morse thus far. What’s the connection between Morse and Monica that was perhaps missing from his previous romance with Alice Vexin (Maimie McCoy) in ROCKET?

RUSS: I think Alice had an idea of Endeavour. An ideal. The one she couldn’t have. And then – once she’s had her heart’s desire, she probably realized that he wasn’t the man she’d made him in her mind. Monica just saw him as who he was; a man – and a rather damaged one at that. She found him at a low point, and helped get him back on his feet.

DAMIAN: Matthew Copley-Barnes (from the Inspector Morse episode The Infernal Serpent played by Geoffrey Palmer) features in TROVE this time played by Jamie Parker. When a character from the original series occasionally makes an appearance in Endeavour (fans will also remember The Last Enemy’s Alexander Reece in FIRST BUS TO WOODSTOCK for example), are they under contract to play them again should their services be required in future episodes?

RUSS: No – alas – the guest players are brought on board for one film at a time. Obviously, we’d go back to them if at all possible. I wouldn’t want to recast. So if they weren’t available, or felt disinclined to come back, then I’d have to rework the idea. It’s something I’m sure we’ll do at some point – it was mooted on this new series – as I’m keen to develop the idea of our Oxford as a living place, where you’re quite likely to bump into people you’ve met before, but in the end we just ran out of sky. Also – as with I.M. – some of our guests are already proving to be the leading lights of the next generation. So, I suspect getting some of them back would be a tougher go – second time around.

1352DAMIAN: It can’t be easy to cast a young Geoffrey Palmer or Barry Foster, do you have any input or preference as to who plays these characters?

RUSS: Some. And probably not so much as a megalomaniac would find agreeable. Susie Parris – our Casting Director — pulls off wonders and miracles for us. The budget allows about 22 speaking rôles per film, including our regulars – and Susie manages to find maybe forty to fifty actors per series that make the cut. You can probably multiply than number by anywhere between two to ten, depending on the part, to get a rough estimate of the number of actors that audition – or, as they call it nowadays, ‘interview’. I don’t know how Susie does it – short of being an actual angel. The patience of Job. How she puts up with us…

As for casting heritage characters. It’s walking a tightrope a lot of the time. It can be tricky when it comes to acknowledging Morse’s future history. People want to feel they’re doing ‘something new’ or breaking fresh ground. Directors have enough to think about without my relentless fanboi gripes – and actors don’t want to do an impression, or some sort of received performance. So…

For me, and I suspect for a section of the fandom — the devil is in the detail. Some you win. Some you don’t.

I’m never left in any doubt that too much of what could be perceived as fan-service might alienate those who have come to Endeavour on its own terms. So that’s something else one has to try to navigate. But I’ve never approached it with the notion of – ‘Oh, this will please the cognoscenti’. Rather it’s there are characters from IM that caught my imagination as a viewer that I’d like to see in different circumstances. Some of them can be quite slight encounters. The merest brushing of shoulders.  If I had ENDEAVOUR having stories with these characters of such weight that they couldn’t possibly forget one another over the intervening 20-odd years, then it would be doing a retroactive disservice to IM. Hopefully there’ll be some audience members who were too young for IM first time round – and Endeavour will lead them to the source of all good things. If they then arrived and were asking themselves – ‘Why doesn’t Morse remember this person?’ or ‘Why is that character pretending not to know Morse?’ then I’d have failed.

As it is – I think with all the characters we’ve deployed, we’ve respected that Prime Directive. At the end of TROVE – Thursday tells Endeavour that Copley-Barnes had told him he would ‘remember him’ – and Endeavour responds with something along the lines of  ‘A vainglorious fool like that? Somehow, I doubt it.’ And I don’t think that Copley-Barnes would have remembered Endeavour. Far too self absorbed to keep a lowly Detective Constable in mind for twenty-five years.

Copley-Barnes was Alma Cullen’s wonderful creation, and played to perfection by Geoffrey Palmer. So – he was just too fascinating a monster to resist getting out of the dressing up box.  As it was, Jamie Parker – who I’d seen play Hal to Roger Allam’s Falstaff – had just been working with Geoffrey Palmer, and so grabbed the challenge with both hands, and a certain amount of relish. Despite all the foregoing – and for good or ill, Series 3 probably features — in terms of heritage characters and conceits — far more connective tissue to IM than the previous two.

DAMIAN: Morse makes some powerful enemies in TROVE and Strange is initiated into a certain ancient fraternity. Will there be more secret handshakes in the future?

RUSS: They haven’t gone away. But I think they’ll be a little less overt in their machinations going forward. Licking their wounds, probably. Biding their time.

DAMIAN: We’ve previously talked about the use of music in the show and I know from my interview with Barrington Pheloung that he doesn’t care much for Wagner! Indeed, because of this, Wagner was sidelined in the original Inspector Morse in favour of Mozart. However, you told me that “time will cast ever darker shadows upon his heart, and that will be reflected in his evolving musical taste”. Will Wagner finally get his just desserts on the turntable?

RUSS: I would hope so.

DAMIAN: What more can you tell us about tonight’s episode?

RUSS: Not much. It’s Easter Bank Holiday. And a funfair has come to town. It’s a whole bunch of notions – some drawn from the period, some not – hurled with wild abandon into the Endeavour blender. But it’s a very different story shape to anything we’ve done before. It started with Donald Campbell, and Bluebird… I had a relative who was there on the fateful day. And one hydroplane led to another. The 60s has most definitely arrived, and I guess it struck me at some point that the Psychedelic Age had something in common with another Age altogether. That there were fascinating parallels. From there it just kind of grew…

DAMIAN: And can we look forward to any “fragrant ladies”?

RUSS: Always. This first half of ’67 probably features a surfeit of them.

DAMIAN: Russ, thank you very much indeed.

RUSS: A pleasure, as always.

RIDE

~

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