Fans of a TV show always fear the finale will end with death. In the case of Endeavour, which has just bowed out after 11 years, we knew the police protagonist – Sgt Morse, played by Shaun Evans – must survive. He needs to hand over the role to John Thaw in Inspector Morse, which preceded Endeavour on our screens but follows it in the story of the Thames Valley detective created by Colin Dexter.
The death of at least one other character was expected, though, with Morse’s boss and mentor, Roger Allam’s DCI Fred Thursday, the biggest worry. The writer of all 36 episodes, Russell Lewis, acknowledged that the real challenge of the last Endeavour was to explain why, in the 33 episodes of Morse, he never once mentions Thursday. (The logical reason is that the earlier years were written later, but Lewis had to make this psychologically plausible.)
