The end's in sight for Endeavour

DAILY MAIL - by Tim Oglethorpe

Warren Beatty isn't the first person you'd think of as a role model, but Endeavour star Shaun Evans says the Hollywood rogue, [...], is his inspiration. 

'I hung out with Warren and his wife Annette Bening when I was filming Being Julia with her – one of my first jobs, when I was about 22 – and it had a big impact on me,' he recalls. 

'I was inspired by the example they set, by how they got things done, how they worked, how they still got access to good parts while preserving a bit of themselves for themselves.

'People say, 'Shaun, you're so cagey about your private life,' like I've got something to hide. 

'But I just value my privacy and if I didn't have that, I wouldn't be able to do my work. 

'I was influenced to conduct myself the way I do by Annette and Warren. 

'We know very little about their life together and that means I'm not thinking about Annette when she performs, I'm just being blown away by her work. 

'The actors I like most are those who have an air of mystery about them, who don't make themselves bigger than the story they're telling.'

'I've tried to be like that myself.'
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To the extent that he's largely retained his anonymity, his plan seems to have worked. 

Apart from the fact that he's single and from Liverpool, has family roots in Northern Ireland and once dated singer Andrea Corr, not much is known about Shaun Evans.  

But his character Endeavour Morse has been scrutinised and analysed for more than 30 years, first with John Thaw's older version of the detective in the classic Inspector Morse from 1987 until 2000, and since 2012 with Shaun's portrayal of the young Endeavour.

Over five previous series we've been gradually building up a picture of the younger man, a highly educated northerner, and the jigsaw will become more complete in the new four-part series on ITV. 

As well as putting down roots in his adoptive city of Oxford, we'll see Endeavour renewing his relationship with Joan, the daughter of his colleague Fred Thursday, who's now a trainee social worker in Oxford.

At the end of the last series, policing in Oxfordshire was being reorganised, and Morse, Thursday (played by Roger Allam), their former boss CS Reginald Bright (Anton Lesser) and DS Jim Strange (Sean Rigby) were scattered to the winds. 

They remain separated at the start of the new series, with Morse back in uniform and out in the countryside patrolling a quiet rural beat, while Bright's churning out unintentionally comical road safety films for children. 

Strange has taken up a managerial role at divisional headquarters and poor old Thursday, who carried the can for the murder of his colleague George Fancy in the final episode of the last series, is now working with a couple of tough guys, DCI Ronnie Box (Simon Harrison) and his sidekick DS Alan Jago (Richard Riddell) at Castle Gate station.

But that doesn't mean there aren't murders for Morse to solve. 
[...]
Throughout, Endeavour demonstrates the intellect and eye for detail that are his hallmark. '

He loves the process of detection,' says Shaun.

Set in 1969, the new series embraces momentous real-life events such as the investiture of Charles as the Prince of Wales and the Apollo moon landing, as well as the changing fashions. 

Endeavour sports longer hair, a moustache and sideburns, and even wears sunglasses. 

'The moustache is all my own work,' says Shaun. 

'My family don't care for it very much but it was easy enough to grow. 

'I grew a beard and then just shaved that off, leaving the moustache. 

'Anything that gives me distance from my character has to be a good thing.'

By the end of this series there will have been 27 episodes of Endeavour, closing in on the 33 episodes of Inspector Morse that John Thaw filmed. 
But with the foundations for the life of the older version firmly put in place in this series – we'll see Endeavour move in to the house in Oxford where the older Morse lived, for example – Russell Lewis, the man who writes Endeavour, says time is definitely ticking on the younger version. 

'Endeavour has a timeline, a sense of development for our characters as we move towards a pre-ordained terminus which is, alas, inching slowly into view,' he says.

So could this be the end of Endeavour? 
'It could be, but I've been saying that for a while now,' laughs Shaun. 

'What we've taken to doing is ending each series as if it could be the last so we don't end up thinking, "I wish I'd done that in that final episode". 

'I'd have tried to make that happen if I'd known we weren't coming back.' We make sure there are no regrets.'