Endeavour, Series 9
by Russell Lewis (ITV, 2023)
A decent ending to a long-running programme. While much of the emotional impact stems from Matthew Slater’s score, Roger Allam (Thursday) and Anton Lesser (Superintendent Bright) have sublime moments conveying, respectively, the jaded and melancholic feelings of characters being overtaken by time.
The Hippopotamus
dir. John Jencks (2017)
Suitably if affectedly quirky, and faithful to Stephen Fry’s novel. Roger Allam, starring as a misanthropic lapsed poet investigating a spate of manor-house miracles, delivers a decidedly Fry-esque yet more measured performance than Fry himself might have managed if playing the role.
Endeavour, Series 2
by Russell Lewis (ITV, 2014)
Four more feature-length episodes. Shaun Evans and Roger Allam further establish their dynamic as the perceptive young Morse and his mentor Fred Thursday. Several of the murder mysteries, however, rely too heavily on stacked coincidences for their execution, obfuscation and eventual unravelling.