Endeavour poster

Endeavour

★ 8.6 38K votes 2012–2023 9 seasons · 36 episodes Ended ITV1
Detective mysteryCrime-solving from the investigator's side of the table.This show: 10/10British TVThe British television sensibility: tone, restraint and format traditions.This show: 9/10Period pieceSet meaningfully in a past era.This show: 9/10MelancholicA wistful sadness woven through the story, even in its lighter moments.This show: 8/10AtmosphericMood and place thick enough to touch.This show: 8/10Character studyInterior life matters more than plot.This show: 7/10
Rate this series
Starring
Shaun EvansRoger AllamJames BradshawSean RigbyAnton LesserCaroline O'Neill
Starring
Shaun EvansRoger AllamJames BradshawSean RigbyAnton LesserCaroline O'Neill
Ratings per Episode
246810
Votes per Episode
02k3k5k6k

Endeavour Episode Ratings Heatmap

AvgE1E2E3E4E5E6
S18.48.28.68.18.4
S28.68.38.58.58.9
S38.28.08.18.08.8
S48.18.27.88.08.4
S58.38.27.98.48.18.48.8
S68.58.57.98.19.2
S78.08.07.78.3
S87.77.67.87.6
S98.78.18.69.2

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About

"A genius detective's slow, sad becoming"

Endeavour follows a young Endeavour Morse as he joins Oxford City Police in the early 1960s, long before he becomes the irascible inspector of the original series. Each film-length episode wraps a knotty murder case around the era's class tensions and buried secrets, but the real pull is watching a brilliant, awkward outsider slowly harden into the detective he's fated to be. It's moody, handsomely shot, unhurried, soaked in period detail and classical music, and carried by a lead performance that makes solitude feel quietly devastating rather than dull.

Watch it for

the way a whole personality and worldview is built case by case over a decade.

Maybe skip if

you want fast pacing rather than slow-burn character study wrapped around each case.

Written by our AI editor to help you decide, spoiler-free by design.

All Seasons

Series 12013
8.412K57h 57m
Before Inspector Morse, there was the rookie Constable Morse, fed up with police work and ready to nip his career in the bud by handing in his resignation.
Series 22014
8.66K46h
1966 brings Endeavour a fresh quartet of baffling mysteries set to test his brain and body to breaking point. Though offset by the possibility of love unlooked for, against a backdrop of growing change in Britain and the wider world, Endeavour must face a challenge that threatens to take from him all he holds dear... Family. Friends. Colleagues. The old order changeth... but not without a fight. To the death.
Series 32016
8.26K45h 56m
Last seen languishing in a prison cell and framed for a crime he didn't commit, Endeavour is impelled to return to duty when a young woman's baffling murder requires his singularly cerebral mind to solve. As both men struggle to find their bearings amidst the rapidly changing climate of early 1967, four cases set against the dreaming spires of Oxford test their partnership in unexpected ways, as Colin Dexter's iconic detective is pushed to new extremes in his unrivalled commitment to truth and justice.
Series 42017
8.15K45h 55m
In Series four, barely a fortnight has passed since the events depicted in the series three finale, and we find Oxford’s finest picking up the pieces of their lives, both personal and professional. Endeavour waits to hear the result of his Sergeant’s Exam, and self-medicates to numb his heartache, but whisky and Tännhauser will only get a man so far. While Thursday and Win deal with their own sense of grief. Their home is empty, Sam gone to the Army and Joan… Who knows where? The stories that remain will take Endeavour and Thursday, together with the rest of Oxford’s Finest, into places hitherto unexplored – the worlds of 1960s pop; Doctors and Nurses; and an exploration of the English pastoral.
Series 52018
8.38K68h 53m
It's now 1968. Endeavour’s promotion leads him to reluctantly mentor new recruit Fancy, while Thursday is thinking about life after the police. But in Oxford, crime never sleeps. Will things at Cowley Police Station ever be the same again?
Series 62019
8.56K45h 59m
With the old Cowley team now scattered across Oxfordshire, Endeavour has reluctantly settled into a sedate way of life in an isolated countryside outpost. An uncomfortable Thursday also has a new role at the forbidding Castle Gate station, joining former adversary DCI Ronnie Box and his new sidekick DS Alan Jago. Strange has taken on a management role with Division, while Bright has been relegated to the Traffic department. The Summer of Love is well and truly over, and 1969 promises to be darker and more challenging than ever.
Series 72020
8.04K34h 27m
Opening on New Year’s Eve 1969, normal order has been resumed and the team reunited at Castle Gate CID. However, the events of the past year have left their mark. Old friendships will be challenged and new relationships will blossom.
Series 82021
7.74K34h 38m
Series eight is set in 1971 and a death threat to Oxford Wanderers' star striker Jack Swift places Endeavour and his team at the heart of the glitz and glamour of 1970s football, exposing the true cost of success and celebrity, and with it, a deep-rooted division that is soon reflected much closer to home.
Series 92023
8.74K34h 42m
It's Spring, 1972. Two unexplained deaths turn up ties to the Oxford Concert Orchestra, while a body discovered in a derelict warehouse stokes fears that ‘London business' has yet again found its way to Oxford. Thursday and Endeavour's investigation unearths some unsettling connections to cases the duo believed were well and truly behind them.

Full Cast & Crew

Cast

Shaun Evans DS Endeavour Morse, DC Endeavour Morse, Sergeant Endeavour Morse
Roger Allam DI Fred Thursday, DCI Fred Thursday
James Bradshaw Dr. Max DeBryn
Sean Rigby DS Jim Strange, PC Jim Strange, Sergeant Jim Strange
Anton Lesser Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright, ACC Reginald Bright
Caroline O'Neill Win Thursday
Abigail Thaw Dorothea Frazil
Sara Vickers Joan Thursday
Dakota Blue Richards WPC Shirley Trewlove
Jack Laskey DS Peter Jakes, Peter Jakes

Crew

Russell Lewis

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