To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,

We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,

To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica

Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,

And to-day we have naming of parts.

First stanza of Naming of Parts from the Lessons of War collection of poems by Henry Reed

NAMING OF PARTS

An exclusive Endeavour interview with Roger Allam

Interview copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2023

DAMIAN: What do you remember of your first foray into the world of Colin Dexter and working with John Thaw in the episode, Death Is Now My Neighbour, from the original Inspector Morse series?

ROGER: I don’t remember a great deal actually. Certainly not about the plot. I was very glad that my great friend John Shrapnel was in it with me. John Thaw I knew through Sheila Hancock at the RSC where I had worked with her both as actress and director. So he was very nice to me. I was very inexperienced in terms of television having worked up to then mainly in the theatre, so was hugely glad to be in it as I’d always loved the series.

DAMIAN: There was 33 episodes of Inspector Morse and the same number for the follow-up, Lewis. A prequel to the original was announced to be broadcast in 2012 and I believe there was initially a suspicion by some in the industry that Endeavour was a cynical attempt to try and exploit the franchise further. However, what was your initial reaction when you were first offered the role of Detective Inspector Fred Thursday?

ROGER: We started while Lewis was still being made and broadcast. Many of the crew worked on both. But I don’t think the impulse to make Endeavour was a cynical one. I certainly didn’t think so when I was offered Thursday. My initial reaction was one of great interest in that I had never played a role like him before.

DAMIAN: So, here we are, over ten years and 36 episodes later. Each episode – although, given their quality and length, they should really be referred to as films – is usually shot over 23 days, 5 days a week – apart from when you shoot on location in Oxford which also requires additional shooting over the weekend. Given that this is obviously a huge commitment for such an award-winning and in-demand actor such as yourself, do you think that you would have originally signed up to play Thursday if you had known back then that Endeavour would last for nine series?

ROGER: I was very apprehensive about doing a long running series and my heart sank when they asked for an initial three years. I only agreed to two. So if they’d asked for nine at the start I think I would have run a mile. I think the executives at Mammoth, Damien Timmer and Michele Buck, were very sensible and canny to, in the end, just do it by the year. Shaun and I relaxed into it and realised that even four films gave us time to do other work in the year.

DAMIAN: While preparing for the role, I believe that the writer, Russell Lewis, suggested that you might find something to draw on by taking a look at Henry Reed’s Lessons of War. One of the poems in this collection, Naming of Parts, consists of two distinct voices: an experienced superior officer giving an arms lesson to his young and innocent recruit who can’t help but think of Spring, making love and the mechanics of sex rather than the mechanics of a rifle. It can be read as a clash between uniformity and freedom, conventional versus individualistic, and of course, the gulf between old ways and new ideas so there’s some obvious parallels there between Endeavour and Thursday. Additionally, the poem was quoted by Thursday at the end of the film, COLOURS (S5:E4), but to what extent do you think the poem and its themes originally influenced your interpretation of the Fred Thursday audiences know and love today?

ROGER: I don’t remember Russ talking about Henry Reed at the start though I do remember him doing so before COLOURS. The theme of the war though was always present in mine and Russ’ thoughts about Fred’s character. The memory of the awful violence endured was always there to be tapped into if he lost his temper. As he sometimes did.

DAMIAN: Furthermore, Russ has also told me that Thursday’s war record mirrors that of L/Cpl W.H. Lewis of the Eighth Army fighting in North Africa, El Alamein, Italy and Austria. Did you ever look into and research influences such as these or was there enough detail in the script for you to find Thursday?

ROGER: I certainly researched stuff about the soldier’s experience of war. There’s a lot on google and I found two books very helpful to dip into ‘ Time to Kill’ by Paul Addison and Angus Calder, and ‘The Desert War” by Alan Moorhead. Also both my grandfathers had fought in WW1 and many uncles had in WW2, so the memory of those wars was ever present for me growing up. One of my earliest memories is playing on the ‘bomb site’ round the corner in the East End of London where I was born. And of course talking with Russ about all this. And, of course, there was a lot to go on in the scripts as well.

I had an Uncle Fred who fought in WW2 and an Aunt Win, a brother and sister of my father, so that generation of my wider family were also always very present in my thoughts about Fred.

DAMIAN: A large part of Thursday’s early life would have seen the harsh realities of the Depression and then later more positive aspects such as the Attlee government and the creation of the Welfare State and the NHS. How do you think factors such as these shaped Thursday not only as a husband and a father, but also as a policeman?

ROGER: There was a huge drive after WW1 to create the ‘land fit for heroes’. This fueled Atlee and many of his officer class generation, having experienced that dreadful war and got close to ‘the men’, who of course also strove for a better life. This was thwarted by fear on the part of the capitalist class of Communist revolution and the General Strike. So that impulse for a better life for all was delayed and frustrated until the second Labour government after WW2. To me Fred was very much an Atlee man. There was a line, possibly in the pilot, something like “I didn’t tramp halfway round Europe to come back and find the country being run by spivs and chancers“. All these experiences shaped Fred as a man, husband and father. The family was ultimately what he fought for. Being a policeman was still for him a version of fighting for that better life, or fighting to protect it, and protect the family. That’s why he hated corruption in the police, and why it was so awful when he fell, or nearly did.

DAMIAN: Would you agree that when the Thursday family was first introduced in FUGUE (S1:E2), your character took on an extra dimension and became even more interesting to play?

ROGER: The family was what made me want to play the character. Originally they were going to be in the pilot but there was not enough time to include that story element in a single film. The Thursday family gave many opportunities, early on, to show that human warmth and love that Endeavour yearns for but is outside of. Later on, as Joan and Sam get older, the family relations become more complicated.

DAMIAN: In my previous interviews with Jack Bannon and Sara Vickers, they both said what fun you were on set with your dry sense of humour and that you originally helped them to get into the 60s era with memories of your own childhood. Would it be too much of an intrusion to ask for an example of the sort of historical anecdotes you shared with them?

ROGER: Well, of course, if you’re filming a series set in the 60s and 70s it is a revelation and something of a shock – albeit at the same time rather exotic – to the younger generation that we could cope without so much stuff. Lots of people didn’t have cars but most importantly there were no mobile phones so getting around, keeping people informed, knowing where you were going, taking photos, and looking stuff up was a totally different experience. We had to have maps like the A to Z! You had to look things up in a book! My parents had a wind up gramophone in the 50s and bought an electric record player in the 60s. I think we had at most six LPs. I can’t remember a specific  anecdote, but I think it was more part of a general ongoing conversation, with additions from any crew member nearer my generation.

DAMIAN: As you mentioned, with the introduction of the Thursday family, Endeavour felt part of a warm and loving home which he himself never fully experienced in his own childhood. Perhaps particularly in light of his father dying in HOME (S1:E4), I wondered if – in the early days of the show at least – Thursday loved Endeavour as a trusted friend and colleague or like a surrogate son?

ROGER: Well, he could be part of it a bit, but also not part of it and an outsider at the same time. Indeed, there was a surrogate son element to their relationship, though that isn’t necessarily something Fred would be aware of at the time. It’s a relationship that an older and younger man can fall into in a work situation. Especially where there is rank involved. Especially when the relationship is good and caring. Teacher/pupil also. Fred has seen something in Endeavour that he wants to nurture, something that could make him a great detective. Also Endeavour sometimes looks after Fred, sometimes teaches him, the roles can easily reverse.

DAMIAN: Obviously the relationship between the two has somewhat deteriorated over the years, particularly over the previous couple of series and as is often the case between Endeavour and Thursday, it’s what’s left unsaid that really resonates. An example of this might be the scene towards the end of CODA (S3:E4): ‘There was a bullet left in the chamber, whatever you told Cole Matthews, you knew it. You drew his fire’, and it’s the silence after this where the two seem to communicate best in these pauses and they are masters of an almost Pinteresque understatement in conveying their friendship and respect for each other. How would you describe their relationship and how it has evolved from the first film to the very last?

ROGER: Shaun and I often discussed what was left unsaid and hanging in the air so that we could hopefully bring atmosphere and depth to the scene. This was something that developed over the years. Mine and Shaun’s relationship as actors grew over time as did Fred and Endeavour’s as characters.

DAMIAN: I’ve observed over the years throughout various conversations and interviews with Russ that of all the new and original characters for Endeavour, as opposed to those created by Colin Dexter, Thursday was the one he perhaps infuses most with his own personality and past, particularly with reference to the dialogue with its wonderfully unique rhythms and tones, phrases, idioms and patterns of speech. Russ agreed that Thursday was possibly an idealised version of his old man who was of the same generation as Thursday, and that the dialogue is often stuff he remembers hearing from when he was a boy. I was wondering if you were aware of any of this and to what extent you agree that these “Russ-isms” slip into Thursday every now and again?

ROGER: I was aware that Russ was tapping into his father for Thursday in the same way as I was with my family. Russ used a lovely characterful idiom for Fred and I was certainly conscious of that and loved playing it. ‘Look after your shoes and your shoes look after you’. A cousin of mine picked up on that as something she remembered from childhood. Of course, I can’t remember many now but things like: ‘I’ll have your cobblers for a key fob’, ‘More under my hat than nits’, ‘Where am I going to keep ‘em? [pet birds] Up my arse, Winifred, like David Nixon!’, are quite simply great lines and great fun to play.

DAMIAN: There’s a wonderful scene in the film, CARTOUCHE (S5:E2), set in a cinema – one of those beautiful old picture palaces – where Thursday tells Endeavour about the films he watched as a kid on Saturday mornings such as those starring Laurel & Hardy and George Formby.

And in TROVE (S2:E1), I was reminded of the old noir films and literature such as the work of Chandler, Hammett and all those great Humphrey Bogart movies of the thirties and forties, but I also noticed that there was perhaps the more particular British Noir influences such as Graham Greene and his Brighton Rock or The Third Man. Therefore, I was thrilled to hear Russ tell me that you yourself are something of a fan of the genre.

Additionally, I know that you improvised a large part of the farewell speech at DS Peter Jakes’ leaving party at the Lamb & Flag pub during ARCADIA (S3:E2) that invokes all the Cowboy film titles so you must also have a passion for Westerns. Can you tell me a little bit about the films you saw as a child and the actors you admired most?

ROGER: I don’t really remember improvising Jake’s farewell speech! I certainly liked Westerns as a child and Noir when I was a teenager. I remember Russ coming into my trailer when by chance The Third Man was on the telly – one of the very few times the telly actually worked – at the famous Ferris wheel scene and we both watched it. It’s one of my very favourite films. I first saw it when I was about fourteen and it was the first time I’d seen a British film that had that particular sceptical tone about the aftermath of the war. I read a lot of Hammet , Chandler and Cain and saw the film adaptations. Of course, you draw on  influences from life, but also from films and plays and television. If you need to learn how to wear a hat, Bogart is your man. How to get off a horse, or out of a car and carry a gun, Clint. The Westerns and Noir films I saw a bit later than childhood were more useful as they were more morally ambiguous: Fords’ The Searchers, say, or Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. I still can’t watch Casablanca without crying. Cary Grant in his Hitchcock films is a wonder for what goes on behind his eyes.  Cagney in gangster films like Public Enemy is glorious in his theatricality and violence. 

DAMIAN: In terms of exploring the history of your character, I found SWAY (S2:E3) one of the most interesting films with such beautifully written, character-driven romantic scenes featuring Thursday and his old war sweetheart Luisa Armstrong who hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. If Luisa, after the ‘Fredo, hold me. Once. For what we were’ moment hadn’t have told Thursday never to come back, do you think he would have continued to see her in secret behind Win’s back?

ROGER: I don’t think he could have and lived with himself.

DAMIAN: Was it a pleasant surprise when you read the script for SWAY to see Russ delving into Thursday’s backstory or were scenes such as these – providing an opportunity for you to move away from the detective mystery aspects and focus on something more character-driven that you could sink your teeth into and stretch your muscles emotionally – something that you were specifically asking for?

ROGER: I think Russ and I were always looking for things from Fred’s past that could be of use. Often they might just be things for me to think about as an actor. Sometimes they’d be part of the story as in SWAY, or when I suddenly spoke some German in ROCKET – that was a bit of a shock. Contrast and elements that weren’t just procedural were always welcome. 

DAMIAN: And was the ballroom dancing in series 5 a pleasant surprise or something of a shock?

ROGER: Indeed it was. I laboured mightily to not look like a sack of potatoes.

DAMIAN: Russ once joked to me that he has two notes up on his wall in the room where he writes. One reads ‘Television is a collaborative medium’ and the other, ‘Collaborators will be shot’. Seriously though, do you feel as though you were welcome to collaborate in terms of Thursday and perhaps give me an example of any aspects of the character development over the years that you felt particularly strong about?

ROGER: Collaboration and suggestions were always welcome and I hope useful. Sometime in the middle of our run I remember a conversation with Russ about where we should go with Fred. I said that the family had been everything to him and the foundation of his life and happiness so what needed to happen was for it to be taken away from him. Which is kind of what happened for a while until fences were mended. Of course a version of that happens with every family as children grow up and leave home.

DAMIAN: The end of Endeavour is obviously something that’s been seriously discussed a lot in the last few years but what were you personally looking for in the scripts to this final series in order to keep Thursday fresh and interesting to play?

ROGER: A substantial and satisfying enough reason for John Thaw’s Morse never to mention Fred Thursday. 

DAMIAN: From the very beginning, Russ has always maintained that he knew exactly how Endeavour would end. At what point did he share this with you and what was your initial reaction?

ROGER: A couple of years before he produced a storyline that led to the endpoint that we now have. Though the way of getting there has changed somewhat, the end has stayed the same. I thought it was great.

DAMIAN: Why do you feel now is the right time for the show to end?

ROGER: It’s been quite a while hasn’t it? I think we have fully explored the group of regular characters’ relationships and we didn’t want to repeat ourselves. 

DAMIAN: I’ve interviewed all of the regular cast and also a good many members of the crew. Shaun Evans, for example, described you as ‘glorious, funny, and irreverent, and sharp, but most of all one of the most wonderful, coolest actors”. Indeed, everyone has always said such wonderful things about you but I think one of the most revealing quotes was from Sean Rigby who told me that performing with you and Anton Lesser was like a masterclass in acting. What will you miss most about playing Fred Thursday?

ROGER: What I’ll miss most is being on set with and spending time with Shaun, Anton, Sean, Caroline, Sara, Jack, Jimmy, Abigail and all the actors who joined us. Inevitably Shaun most of all as we have collaborated so closely and for so long. He is the best of men and the finest of actors and directors. 

DAMIAN: Have you kept the fedora?

ROGER: No. What would I do with it? I couldn’t wear it! I’ve always loved it, it is a Dunn and Co hat – not a fedora, I think,  what is it? A trilby? – as is the coat I always wore. Perfect for Fred and for the period when there was a Dunn and Co Gentleman’s outfitters in every town more or less. Tragically, after the first series, it was stored badly and got crushed, so I had to go to the wonderful Lock and Co in St. James and get a beautiful and very expensive replacement which I wore for the following series. The series after that, the designer had found the old hat and had a lot of repair work done on it to remove the crush mark. I think she wanted the old hat back. She gave me the choice and we looked at them in the mirror. The Dunn and Co was simply more Fred than the beautiful elegant Lock and Co. so we went back to it. However, I searched out the Lock and Co during the final series and the designer found it. It has become mine. I have nearly worn it twice and will do so at some stage, but the problem with hats, as I discovered over all those years, is where do you put them? Aside from on your head? 

DAMIAN: And just one final question please – I keep asking Russ but he never tells me – what sandwich does Thursday have on Wednesdays?

ROGER: No idea, I’m afraid. 

DAMIAN: Roger, thank you very much indeed. You’re one of our very finest actors and with you wearing the hat, Detective Chief Inspector Fred Thursday has become every bit as iconic as Morse or any other character in a classic detective drama. Very best wishes for the future and, of course, mind how you go.

ROGER: I will try to Damian, and mind how you go.

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Interview copyright © Damian Michael Barcroft 2023

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