Masterpiece Mystery!: Endeavour, Season 5

With Season 5, "Endeavor" continues with its complex plotting, intelligent writing and overall rather bleak tone. Joan Thursday is back in Oxford, and she and Morse circle each other with studied and unconvincing indifference. On the positive side, Morse has finally been promoted, and he's now Detective Sergeant (DS) Morse and Strange is now a Sergeant.As you'd expect in a great series, in addition to the mystery plotting, there are memorable moments which flesh out the characters. Tend to think that Morse is totally buttoned up with no humor? See him smile at himself, when he can't help but tilt his car's rear-view mirror to watch Joannie walking away in her mini-skirt. The mini-story line with Thursday and his brother is a bit heartbreaking. But the part where Mr. and Mrs. Thursday tango their way through the 1968 All England Ballroom Championship Regional Quarter Final almost makes up for it.I've included an episode synopses at the end of the review. I particularly enjoyed "Quartet". In a great touch, I was delighted to see Ellie Haddington play Miss Bagshot, an MI6 operative. You may remember her playing Hilda Pierce, the stony-faced spy master in "Foyle's War", see especially the Incredible Season 8.Season 5 consists of six episodes totaling almost 9 hours. This is the UK edition, so all scenes are included if you buy the show on disc. English subtitles are available on the episodes and the Bonus Features:...A..."Odd Couple" (2 minutes) Commentators include Shaun Evans (plays Morse), Sara Vickers (plays Joan Thursday) and Sean Rigby (plays DS Strange). To save money, Morse and Strange are temporarily sharing an apartment. Rigby: "You really have two people with very different relaxing styles. Strange is fond of a Chinese [take out] and watching the telly. Whereas Endeavor's more of a crossword and perhaps a nice record."...B..."Favourite Scenes" (2 minutes) New commentators include Roger Allam (plays DI Thursday), Lewis Peek (plays DC Fancy) and Dakota Blue Richards (plays WPC Trewlove)....C..."Costume Design" (2 minutes) Mary-Jane Reyner (costume designer) takes about designing for 1968....episode 1..."Muse" It is Monday, April 1, 1968. All in the opening credits, we see five story threads which will come together before the end: After the end of a lecture on the end of the Romanovs, the last remaining jeweled egg will be auctioned; we visit a class where students are painting from a live titian-haired model; a woman gardens next to a giant windmill; a prizefight at Nero's Gym; and a telephone operator bank. The first murder is Joey Sikes, a hired car driver, ex-boxer, shot three times in the wee hours for no reason....episode 2..."Cartouche" It's a nostalgic double feature at the Roxy Theatre, including an oldie but goodie B&W movie "The Pharaoh's Curse" starring Emil Valdemar. How is that going to tie in with the predicament at Brown's Cafe, when Mr. Nero's thug comes in to collect the required protection money?...episode 3.."Passenger" A trainspotter at the Norborough train station sees a lone woman picked up by a stopping train, which he dutifully writes in his notebook. But when Morse arrives looking for a missing woman, the station master assures him that there was no train at that time....episode 4..."Colours" The Oxford Debating Society has a spirited topic: Whether or not all immigrants should be forced to return to their ancestral land. The more things change... In the meanwhile, Corporal Samuel Thursday (yes, his son) is helping out at the fake village used for combat training. It's nicknamed "Murder Town," which will become appropriate....episode 5..."Quartet" We're now in December, 1968. Oxford is hosting the Jeux Sans Frontieres, a deliberately silly contest among six European countries. Costumed contestants compete in good-natured contests such as hurdling, where the hurdlers are covered head-to-toe in "giant" costumes. It's funny to watch, including when Switzerland knocks down Germany. But the German giant doesn't get up again. So much for funny.Trivia: The Jeux Sans Frontieres (Games Without Borders) was a real European TV show from 1965-1999 with teams from different countries competing in silly costumes....episode 6..."Icarus" Morse sits in the Headmaster's office at Coldwater School, an exclusive prep school to mold young men into the leaders of tomorrow. The headmaster says, "It's a remarkable stroke of good fortune that you should be able to join us at such short notice." Say what? Morse is replacing Mr. Ivory as the Lower Sixth Classics Master. There must be a good reason.An absolutely excellent series. I leave you with my favorite quote of the season: "Cruelty is like cancer. It starts in one cell, and then spreads."Happy Reader

Great mystery who done it show

This is a superb series in every way - the authenticity of the time (1968), locations, script, acting, and humanizing features. This series, with six episodes was, in mho, the best yet. Each episode was gripping, fresh, and had interwoven threads connecting them all in some way. The police station which serves as the base for Endeavor is in danger of being closed and consolidated for economic reasons; Thursday is considering retirement; his daughter returns but not to her childhood home; Morse is given a sex life and who the young lady is turns out to be very interesting, to say the least; Thursday's son is about to enter the British armed forces; a newbee police officer named Fancy arrives on the scene and is put under Morse's wing - and turns out to be far more than his initial appearance made him out to be; a female officer gets far more exposure than in previous seasons and plays a brief but critical part at one point in the current episodes; organized crime, gang wars, and turf battles are the real threat in Oxford; interference and bullying from higher up law and order officials adds extra pressure on the Endeavor group. How the last two items are handled is far and away the most significant story line for this particular season. Hopefully, there will be a Series 6 since Series 5 ended with a cliff hanger (NO Spoiler here).If you have any problem obtaining captions, try your DVD remote. This has worked for me.

This became my favorite reason for keeping Amazon Prime.I don't particularly like the Inspector Morse series, but I've re-watched every episode of Endeavour several times. It's well-written, and the acting is top notch. I especially love Roger Allam's Thursday and all his quirks. The 1960's language is perfect...from the stuffy professors (often the villains) and rock stars down to the hippies, informants, and drug addicts. Quite a few real events from the time are mirrored in fictional form and it's always a delight. The writing is dense and sometimes I don't understand how Morse works things out unless I re-watch an episode.My favorite thing is watching the episode, then rewinding to the beginning to see the opening to watch for important visual details. For example, a pair of shoes that becomes important later on is casually shown tossed onto the floor.

A great presentation of a young Norse. Shaun Evans performance is magnificent!

I wanted the full "Endeavour" with no snippets cut from the program so I ordered Seasons 5, 6 and 7 from Rarewaves-Imports. They all arrived with no problem and considering they were being sent from the UK, they were all received within a very reasonable time. I would order from this group again. Please keep in mind that these DVDs are REGION 2 and not playable on a US only machine.

I absolutely love this program and always look forward to the release of new episodes. I took off one star because for some reason, unlike the previous seasons, the first episode of season 5 (and possibly the rest of the upcoming episodes?) has no closed captioning. And I (like many, many others) need closed captioning. I’ve purchased the whole season, but I will have a very difficult time viewing it without the expected captioning.Update: 5.2 is available and there is still no closed captioning. I can understand if the captions were not made available by the content owners (which is what Amazon told me had happened), but I feel that Amazon should have made it clear that there were no captions on this season BEFORE purchase. When I purchased this season, judging by the previous 4 seasons, I reasonably expected season 5 to have them, too.Update: 5.3 DOES have captions! Thank you! Now could we maybe get replacement videos with captions on the first two episodes?And I should have made it clear...I’m talking about the streaming Prime Videos, not the DVDs.

One of the best features for me at my advanced age, is the way times past are re-created so vividly.My particular copy had Episodes 5 and 6 on Disk 2 and Episodes 3 and 4 on Disk 3. It is important to know this for those watching in Episode order because some of the story lines run in order through the whole series.

As my heading suggests Endeavor is up there with the best of them. The series was five stars from season one and is still there with season five. Morse like Banks , Vera , Lewis and George Gently is the dominant character, yet all have excellent teams or side kicks to support them.Excellent story lines. Not a minute of boredom. The very best of British t.v. Please bring on season 6!

It is good to see the new season of "Endeavour" going back to its roots, after a "mediocre" season four. Still a few glitches--let's get on with solving the mysteries (murders) and let us not dwell on his love life. We know how that ends anyway. Shaun Evans and Roger Allam make a good team. AND--it's good to see that John Thaw's (original Insp. Morse) actual daughter is still included in the cast. A nice homage, yet I believe she deserves credit all on her own. And Barrington Pheloung continues to do the incredible musical sound track!

ACE SERIES. Well directed, acted and produced. Full marks and five stars. Will watch it again soon. Thank you XXX .P.S. Anyone who gives this brilliant series one star obviously does not understand it and should try something simple to watch.

Endeavour is my favorite detective series ever. The writing is great with the story lines in each episode completely different from each other.whichis especially evident in series 5. The acting is superb such that it seems to anyone watching that this isn't fiction at all. The actors are living theirparts. In my opinion, series 5 is the best so far for a lot of reasons. Who could have foreseen Morse sharing a flat with Strange? Morse is more"prickly" than ever with people but yet seems to have more affairs with the ladies. We even see him smoking in one episode! The story lines arevery timely in that they include racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and immigration problems. One unusual thing about this series is that thesame main "crook" appears throughout the six episodes, and one really nice thing is that we get to see Sam Thursday again in the "army" episode.For me, the only down side for this series is that it didn't include bonus features. Otherwise, it was perfect and I'm looking forward to series 6!