TERMIUS DEF SERIES
TERMIUS DEF TV

TERMIUS DEF SERIES

(The presence of ‘morse’ in that last line doubtless appealed too greatly to Dexter’s cruciverbalist mind not to turn to his own use!)Įndeavour recites those same lines in the series two finale ‘ Neverland’, just before Fred Thursday is shot. Housman’s ‘ How Clear, How Lovely Bright.’ In the final Inspector Morse episode, adapted from Dexter’s novel The Remorseful Day, Thaw’s character quotes these lines from Housman’s poem, which uses the passage of the sun across the sky to contemplate the journey from birth to death: Ensanguining the skies / How heavily it dies / Into the west away / Past touch and sight and sound / Not further to be found, / How hopeless under ground / Falls the remorseful day. Thursday’s evocation of the sun recalls a poetic mainstay of the Morse character – A.E. “Just got to hold on for it a bit longer sometimes, is all.”Įndeavour: the Series 8 Finale’s Easter Eggs and Homages By Louisa Mellor “Sun always comes up,” Fred told Endeavour. Instead though, of leaving us with a traumatised Endeavour taking his first shaky step towards recovery, the drama gave us the paternal comfort of ending on a Fred Thursday adage. The “beginning to thaw” moment in the series eight finale is played with beautiful understatement by Shaun Evans and Roger Allam, and could have served perfectly as the scene’s last line.

TERMIUS DEF TV

The name ‘Endeavour’, it’s also fun to note, first appeared in the TV series as a nine-letter solution to Morse’s clue “My whole life’s effort is around Eve.” The detective is famously named after one of Dexter’s fellow cryptic solvers Sir Jeremy Morse, just as his colleague Lewis is named after the pseudonymous solver and setter ‘Mrs B Lewis’ aka Dorothy Taylor. (See the definition of “Frazil”, the surname of the character played by John Thaw’s actor daughter Abigail, for another ice-based allusion to the family name.)Ī love of crosswords, incidentally, isn’t just a character trait for Morse. Cryptic crosswords are built on obscured messages sent from setter to solver, a tradition that Endeavour writer Russell Lewis keeps alive in his scripts through nods to film, books and the original Inspector Morse TV series that fans eagerly wait to interpret with each new episode. Playful yet unobtrusive, it’s a line you could imagine Inspector Morse novelist and crossword setter Colin Dexter getting a kick out of. Employing the slipperiness of one of Morse’s beloved cryptic crossword clues, it’s both definition and description – Shaun Evans’ character is the beginning to Thaw’s, while beginning to thaw is exactly what Endeavour is doing now. The line also pays tribute to John Thaw, the actor who made Inspector Morse famous and played him on screen between 1987 – 2000. Endeavour paused, then nodded at the snow-covered grounds and remarked, “Beginning to thaw.”įans of course recognise the wordplay at work in creator Russell Lewis’ line, which does more than just point towards a defrosting of the recent froideur between Morse and Thursday, and of Endeavour’s frozen grief after Violetta’s death. With uncharacteristic humility, Endeavour asked to take Fred up on the offer of four weeks away “if the offer’s still there.” “As long as you need,” came Thursday’s instant answer. In the light of the new morning, that hostility had melted away. After the murderous plot had been unravelled and the culprits were led away, Endeavour stood outside with Fred Thursday in the approaching dawn.Ī day earlier, Morse had irritably batted away Thursday’s order to take leave from work and discreetly get the help he needs to break his drinking habit before it breaks him. Morse chased the culprits while struggling with the urge to drink – a temptation into which he’s fallen so deeply and so often of late.

He and a busload of fellow travellers had been stranded in an abandoned country house, where a complex murder plot played out. In what could be read as an image of his series eight journey in miniature, Endeavour had spent the night trapped in a snowstorm fighting a killer. Warning: contains spoilers for the Endeavour series 8 finale ‘Terminus’.Īt the end of ‘ Terminus’, Morse emerged from a night of horrors and a year of sorrow.

Termius def