Welcome to a new post. 

——————————————–

Hello everyone and welcome to a new post. Surprising as it may seem many people are not on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc. So, for these people here are my posts from those social media platforms.

Kevin Whately to appear in final episode of Vera.

Vera ITV guest stars confirmed for final series including Auf Wiedersehen Pet legend and soap icon

From the Chronicle.co.uk By Simon Duke TV & Showbiz Editor
15:39, 22 OCT 2024 Updated15:44, 22 OCT 2024

“There will be some familiar faces on screen in Vera’s final series, with the news that some big name stars have landed cameos in the hit drama. Production on Vera series 14 wrapped mid-July. An ITV Drama spokesperson said that it was due to be back ‘sometime in 2025’ but now it’s looking like it could be on screen sooner, with it included in ITV’s Christmas 2024 line-up.”

“The highest profile of the guest stars to be announced so far is Kevin Whately, who is no stranger to a hit Geordie TV series, having been a long serving member of the Auf Wiedersehen Pet, before going onto appear in hit 90s shows like Peak Practice and Inspector Morse, before eventually taking the lead in ITV’s Morse spin-off, Lewis, named after the sidekick he played alongside late acting great John Thaw.”

——————————————

From Abigail Thaw’s Instagram. A week on Tuesday, 29th October I will be watching Abigail in her new play, Rebus: A Game Called Malice.

—————————————————

Roger Allam (Fred Thursday) and Anna Chancellor who appeared in the Morse episode, Cherubim and Seraphim and starred in the Lewis episode, The Gift of Promise.

From whatsonstage.com Alex Wood, 14th October 2024.

Orange Tree Theatre announces new season including Roger Allam and Anna Chancellor

Orange Tree Theatre has unveiled its full 2025 season, featuring six new plays, including four world premieres, two rediscoveries, and a classic comedy.

The season includes productions by established writers and emerging voices, alongside the launch of a new initiative to engage younger audiences: OT Under 30 Nights.

The season opens with the world premiere of Howard Brenton’s Churchill in Moscow, directed by artistic director Tom Littler and starring Roger Allam. Running from 3 February to 8 March, the play imagines a meeting between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin during World War II. This marks Brenton and Littler’s sixth collaboration.

Following this, April De Angelis’ Playhouse Creatures will be revived from 15 March to 12 April, directed by Michael Oakley, with Anna Chancellor leading the cast. This production will later transfer to Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre and Theatre Royal Bath.

——————————————-

From oxonabox.co.uk 14th October 2024.

EXCLUSIVE: Abigail Thaw on the Endeavour reunion, Ian Rankin’s new play ‘Rebus: A Game Called Malice’ at Oxford Playhouse and her father John Thaw.

“It will be so nice coming back to Oxford. I just hope I won’t be a bit maudlin because of Endeavour,” Abigail Thaw tells me. “But the whole gang is coming to watch the play. We are great friends and still in touch, so we always try to see each other’s work.”

By play, Abigail means Rebus: A Game Called Malice written by Sir Ian Rankin over lockdown – featuring a murder mystery party gone wrong. Luckily Rebus, Rankin’s famous detective, is at said dinner party, because, as Abigail points out, he’s much needed.

Delighted to be cast in such a seminal work (Rebus: A Game Called Malice is Ian Rankin‘s first play), she says it’s going down a treat.

In terms of taking the part in Rebus, Abigail was on holiday when she got the call and instantly knew she had to do it: “I’m a big fan of Ian Rankin and worked with Gray O’Brien before, (who plays Rebus) when we were both sweet young things, yet here we are – middle-aged pros,” she laughs.

She’s lovely Abigail Thaw; chatty, reflective and honest, but admits that her long standing part as investigative journalist Dorothea Frazil in ITV’s detective drama Endeavour is perhaps her best known, despite an illustrious career before and since. So how was life after Endeavour?

“Finishing Endeavour was so emotional,” she concedes “but we all agree that we were so lucky to have worked on Endeavour for so long, because it was such an incredible series which had real longevity.

“They were such good people, not just the actors but the whole crew, some of whom had been in it for years, some since Morse. So it was a real privilege to work with the likes of Anton Lessor Anton Lesser talks about Chief Superintendent Bright in Endeavour, Roger Allam Roger Allam on Shaun Evans, Sean Rigby , James Bradshaw , and of course Mr Evans , as well as all the amazing guests. Put it this way – we left on a high, so we were very lucky.

So what is it about Abigail Thaw the lends itself to the murder/mystery genre? “I don’t know! That’s TV for you. Once your face is memorable … but I’m not complaining. Long may it last,” she laughs. “But it is true, it does seem to be my forte because I’ve been in The Bill, Pie In The Sky, Sister Boniface, Miss Scarlet & The Duke. Maybe they think I’m more intelligent than I am,” she smiles.

“But when you’ve had a father as famous as mine (her father John Thaw played Morse), it puts it all into perspective and I just try to make quality work that I enjoy, and so far so good. As long as we can pay the bills and the mortgage (Abigail is married to fellow actor Nigel Whitmey), and the work is interesting I’m happy.

“So here I am, nearly 60 and still playing interesting parts, but I am also grey haired and letting it all happen, although that might be an anomaly. Ask me again in five years time!”

Abigail does admit that she needs to look after herself on tour to stay at the top of her game. “Touring is physically and mentally tough, so at my age I have to attack it differently and not spend every night in the pub, however tempting that is. Instead, I’m going on long walks and doing lots of yoga because with two shows a day you have to look after yourself. Give me a cup of tea and biscuit and an episode of Ludwig and I’m in heaven.”

In the meantime Abigail has got a full tour to look forward to. So what would she say to encourage people to come and see it?

“It’s just a lovely night out at the theatre with nothing to be afraid of, and thanks to Ian Rankin, ‘Rebus: A Game called Malice’ has a great plot and a stunning set. So come and enjoy yourself, and who knows, you might see some familiar TV faces while you’re there.”

Rebus: A Game Called Malice is at Oxford Playhouse from Tuesday October 29 to Saturday November 2.

——————————————–

Shaun Evans as Gadg in Here in America at the Orange Tree Theatre. Thanks to @endeavour_morse on Instagram.

——————————————-

Endeavour’s Shaun Evans lands new role in ITV drama as troubled MI5 agent (msn.com)

Story by Monde Mwitumwa

haun Evans has landed a new TV role as he’s set to star in ITV upcoming thriller, Betrayal. The actor, best known for his roles in Endeavour, Vigil and Until I Kill You, will play a spy John Hughes, who tries to avert “a serious and dark threat to national security while making sense of his own place in the world”.

Ahead of the new series, ITV have shared some details about what viewers can expect. Shaun’s character joined the MI5 “during the war on terror and was at the forefront of averting the biggest terrorist plots on UK soil but now, he is in his mid 40s, married with two children and is struggling to adapt to the new MI5.”

The synopsis continues: “On a hunch, John meets Ehsan, a British Iranian man with links to the Manchester gangland who claims he has intelligence about a plot on UK soil. Before he can share intel, Ehsan is executed by a lone gunman, and John impulsively kills the assassin in retaliation.

“This triggers a chain of events which puts John in direct collision with his superiors who are furious that he appears to have got involved in a Manchester gang turf war.

“John thinks there’s more to it than that and starts digging into Ehsan’s past. He knows he’ll have to redeem himself if he’s to save his career and reputation, all the while struggling with his own mental health after having killed a man.”

As the series goes on, viewers will see John’s efforts to save his career and marriage are tested by Mehreen, an intelligence operative who is brought in to take over John’s duties on the Iran desk.

The synopsis adds: “Their connection is electric, and John must wrestle with temptations his younger self would readily have surrendered to.

“Struggling with his own demons, his love for his family and his complicated loyalty to the institution he’s been part of for over 20 years, John sets out to find the truth of the explosive security threat to the UK before it’s too late.”

Set in London and Manchester, Betrayal will begin filming in early 2025. Speaking about his new role, Shaun said: “I’m delighted to be returning to ITV with this exceptionally well written and timely project.

“It’s a great privilege to reunite with David Eldridge and bring to life his insightful take on the world of espionage. And it is of course a joy to be collaborating once again with the first-rate team at Mammoth Screen. I look forward to sharing it with ITV audiences soon.”

Writer David Eldridge added: “I’m thrilled to be working with ITV and Mammoth Screen on Betrayal, an espionage drama rooted as much in the trials and betrayals of family life as in the bloody, dangerous business of spying.

“It’s also a pleasure to be collaborating again with Shaun Evans for whom I have created the show’s leading role – out of favour intelligence officer John Hughes.”

———————————————–

An interesting connection between the Endeavour episode , Terminus and the Morse episode, Ghost in the Machine.

 

————————————————

A huge thank you to @endeavour_morse on Instagram for allowing me to use these photos. Shaun is in rehearsals for a play, ‘Here in America’ in the USA. It runs from the 14th to 27th September at The Orange Tree Theatre.

———————————————–

‘Endeavour’ Creator Finally Weighs In on That Ambiguous Ending, ‘Morse’ Tributes in the Finale

From tvinsider.com Diane Snyder
August 31, 2024

t was a prequel that took on a life of its own. Endeavour, the British crime drama that premiered in 2012 and became a staple of PBS’s Masterpiece lineup, ended last summer after 36 feature-length episodes, all written by executive producer Russell Lewis. The smashing conclusion resolved some storylines but left unanswered questions — and may have even changed the way some viewers look at parent series Inspector Morse (1987-2000), based on the novels of Colin Dexter.

In the newer show, the younger Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans) started out as a somewhat jaded detective constable in 1965 Oxford, and by 1972 had become a massively cynical detective sergeant. The darkness he faced on the job took its toll. So too did drink and heartbreak. The former Oxford University student watched the woman he loved, Joan Thursday (Sara Vickers), marry his colleague Jim Strange (Sean Rigby). Meanwhile, Morse’s mentor, Chief Inspector Fred Thursday (Roger Allam) — Joan’s father — had to leave Oxford to protect his son Sam (Jack Bannon) from danger.

Lewis looks back on the decade-plus he spent writing Endeavour, answering most — but not all — of our questions.

The final season of Endeavour took us back to one of the most memorable cases that Morse and Thursday ever worked — the one involving child abuse at Blenheim Vale boys’ home in Season 2. Was it always your plan to end the show by reopening, and finally closing, that case?

Russell Lewis: I think it was a hanging chad for a long time and it seemed like it was playing fair with the audience to involve that. And it was a great way to bring back Peter Jakes [Jack Laskey].

It was nice to see Sergeant Jakes again, and also Jack Bannon as Thursday’s son, Sam. Had you been looking for an opportunity to bring them back?

To say goodbye would have been very difficult without Sam Thursday. Jack [Bannon] had been doing Pennyworth and he made himself available to us. We’re enormously thankful for that, and that we were able to fold that story into a much bigger tale. It was all about fathers and sons in the end, I guess, of one kind or another.

Who or what is Morse aiming at when he fires the gun Thursday gave him at the end?

[Executive producer] Damien Timmer, the founder of the feast, and I both have slightly different takes on that, and those two views don’t entirely align, so we thought it was more fun to bite our tongues and let the audience draw their own conclusion.

Some viewers were wondering if Morse was considering suicide or if he was just firing the gun in frustration.

That’s certainly possible.

You’re not going to say what your take on it is?

We’ve both sworn ourselves to silence. [Laughs] Sorry, but that’s how it goes.

You said there had to be a reason why the older Morse never mentions Thursday on Inspector Morse, even though the obvious reason is that since Endeavour is a prequel, the character hadn’t yet been created.

There had to be because the canon from the series was that McNutt was the great mentor [in the “Masonic Mysteries” episode of Inspector Morse]. We brought Thursday in as the guy before McNutt, so we needed to find the reason that Endeavour would never speak of him, and the solution that you have onscreen is the truth of it.

To protect him and his family?

I took inspiration from Colin’s last Morse novel, The Remorseful Day. There’s an epilogue spoiler ahead: Strange talks about Morse’s actions across that novel and that everything he had done had been to protect him and Mrs. Strange. That was my jumping-off point. I found that postscript incredibly moving. The person you might think he was protecting is Strange, but from where we’re coming at it he really loved [Joan].

So when did you decide that Joan would become Mrs. Strange, whose first name is never mentioned in the original Inspector Morse or Colin Dexter’s novels?

It was very much in my mind from fairly early on. I think I mentioned it to the cast maybe from [Season] 4 or 5. We never knew if we were going to get from one year to the next in the early years, but as soon as it seemed to have a returning invitation each year, I thought if we went the distance that’s where it would go — that he wouldn’t get the girl but would spend the rest of his life in her orbit, and that’s why he never leaves Oxford, certainly from where we were going.

Morse did go out with his share of women, though.

There were interesting conversations when we were making it that we wouldn’t be making a series about a man who lived a monastic life. This was his youth and I thought it was more interesting if he was more fully rounded — that he had relationships, as doomed as they may be. There was a bit of nervousness that we were in some way mussying him a little. I thought it was much richer ground if you saw the relationships not work.

Why have Chief Superintendent Bright (Anton Lesser) recite Shakespeare at the end?

For lots of reasons. The Shakespeare that he was reciting — Prospero from The Tempest — was Shakespeare’s last hurrah. Prospero at the end drowns his books and kind of says goodbye to his magic. It felt that we were saying goodbye in the same way. My original version had him teaching in a school in India. The boys were asking him to do a bit of Shakespeare and that was the piece he chose. But it was beyond our budget to do it, so we just had him at his daughter’s grave. Having Anton do “Our revels now are ended” felt of the moment. I don’t know if it worked for everyone, but it was just a way of saying thank you and goodbye.

Shaun Evans and Roger Allam also got executive producer billing in the last couple of seasons. How much input, if any, did they have?

I remember doing a joint call with them to outline the last two seasons, and I think apart from one or two things they were quite happy. You have further thoughts during production or on the floor on the day as often as not. But we certainly ran everything past them just to make sure there was nothing that they were going to be horrified by. [Laughs]

It’s remarkable to me that you wrote all 36 installments. Did you ever think of handing off an episode or two to another writer?

Once the train has left the station, it’s very difficult for someone to come on and pick up the house style. I hate rewriting other writers, so in the end it was just me seeing it through.

Did you spend much time on the set?

Not in the early years. I’d come out maybe once per season. I was usually writing pretty much till the last week or so because changes would come back, or locations would fall through. The last couple of weeks of shooting is when I’d get free, and then I’d nip in and say hello.

The first time I went out was on [Season] 2. We were in this bizarre old paper mill outside Beaconsfield, and the house that served for the police station had been built by someone that survived the Charge of the Light Brigade. It was a very weird space. In those years we shot in the winter, from September, October through into January. We built the Thursday interior sets in this derelict paper mill and it was open to the elements. So the interior stuff at the Thursday house was shot in arctic temperatures. It’s a bit like when they built Regan’s bedroom in a freezer for The Exorcist. And, surprisingly, thereafter we started shooting in the summer. I wouldn’t be surprised if Shaun and Roger said, “That’s it, we’re not doing any more winter shoots. You might as well send us to Stalingrad.” [Laughs]

When did you realize this show had a real fan following?

Dan McCulloch, our producer on the [pilot] and then [Season] 1, who’s young, insisted I get on Twitter. Once you get on Twitter you find out very quickly how people feel about things, for better or worse. For the most part, it was for the better for us, so you knew quite quickly that it was connecting with a lot of people. It was most apparent when I’d go to Oxford and people would have come from around the world to watch the shooting. That was just extraordinary.

I saw a tweet years ago from Joyce Carol Oates praising Endeavour.

That’s extraordinary. It always knocks you sideways when people are lovely about it.

Shaun Evans certainly captured the character of Endeavour brilliantly.

Shaun lived and breathed it for all that time and it was an extraordinary feat. A part of him was always Endeavour. I mean, he wasn’t in character for 10 years, but part of his psyche always kept in touch. He played Endeavour as if he had one layer of skin less than everybody else. He was just that much more raw and easily wounded and sensitive and, consequently, guarded with his emotions.

You were a child actor and even appeared in the 1971 movie Sunday Bloody Sunday with Glenda Jackson. Why did you make the transition to writing?

You get to your teenage years and you want to be cast as Travis Bickle, and you’re being cast as someone’s son or the boy next door, so it was madly frustrating. I’d always written since I was a kid, so to pursue writing was essentially to get to play all the parts first and best, at least in your own head. [Laughs] That was the attraction for me — megalomania, essentially.

One other thing about Sunday Bloody Sunday. There’s a shot where we go past this churchyard and three tearaway kids come past and drag a milk bottle along the paintwork of the cars that are parked there. I’m delighted to say I shared the very first screen appearance of Daniel Day-Lewis. I’m watching him at the wall, [he’s wearing a red bandanna]. You can find it on YouTube.

Looking back on Endeavour, what are you most proud of?

I suppose that we got to finish it, to a certain degree, on our own terms. We didn’t get canceled and leave things up in the air. We were able to end our story in a time of our choosing. I think it’s a testament to everybody that worked on it that we survived as long as we did. It really has meant the world to all of us, to have been so warmly welcomed by so many people and to have the affection they have for the show conveyed to me. And I’m sure we’ll all look back on it with great fondness for the rest of our lives.

With streaming it’s not going anywhere.

You know that Jodie Foster movie Contact that starts with bits of radio waves going up into the cosmos. Somewhere across the cosmos, bits of Endeavour will still be shedding through interstellar space forever. It’s a thought. It’s as close to immortality as any of us will ever get.

——————————————-

Well, this is embarrassing. For years I wasn’t able to identify the location of the school in the Lewis episode, Expiation. It’s the school the Mallory and Hayward children attend. On my last Oxford visit, I walked past the location. It’s Magdalen College School, Cowley Place.

That is all for now. I hope you enjoyed the post. If you did please leave a like and think about subscribing to my website. Thank you.

——————————————

Please consider buying my comprehensive 600 page book on the Endeavour series. https://shorturl.at/7E5Hf

Please leave a like at the bottom of the page and if you haven’t already please subscribe to this website.

Please think about supporting my work by becoming a Patreon for as little as £5 a week. That’s cheaper than a magazine subscription.

Join me on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/morseandlewisandendeavour where you can help support my work to keep not only the Morse Universe relevant but also the memory of John Thaw and Colin Dexter.

Follow me on Twitter (now called ‘X’) https://x.com/Jag248RPA

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1084993125023468

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/kitscot/