If three of TV’s smartest mystery series — “Sherlock,” “Elementary” and “Inspector Morse” — were squished into one show, you’d likely get too much of a good thing.
In the hands of the Hollywood school of schlock-’n-steal, you’d get a big mess. But in the hands of the Brits, you’d get “Endeavour,” about the early years of crusty Brit detective Inspector Morse.
Unlike “Sherlock” and “Elementary,” in which the young Sherlock is transported to modern times, “Endeavour” (that’s Morse’s first name) takes us back to the 1960s to see the sleuth as a rude, young and pre-maturely crusty guy.
Happily, the series — which had its pilot try-out in the States last year — is back as a limited series. It helps, perhaps, to be an Inspector Morse fan to fully get the nuances of this show. If you haven’t seen that series, you may mistake it for a ripoff of the young Sherlock shows, and you’d be wrong.
Here, Endeavour Morse (played by Shaun Evans who even looks like “Sherlock’s” Benedict Cumberbatch) is a detective who has risen through the ranks, perhaps too quickly. And, like young Holmes, he’s arrogant without meaning to be — or, more precisely, unaware that he is arrogant. He’s awkward with women, has a steel-trap brain and has tastes in art and music that run to the classics.
On Sunday’s premiere, “Girl,” Detective Constable Morse and his mentor, Detective Inspector Thursday (Roger Allam) of the Oxford PD are under the thumb of a new, by-the-book, nit-picking Police Chief by the Dickensian name of Superintendent Bright (Anton Lesser) — who’s dim when it comes to seeing Morse’s light and won’t cut either Morse or his mentor Thursday any slack.
So, when a young woman with a heart condition is found dead in bed, Morse is dispatched like a nobody to simply go to the home and give the case the all-clear. But come on! It’s Morse! He wouldn’t take a young woman’s death at face value, even if he killed her himself.
Thus, we are plunged into a mystery that involves a vicar, one professor with motive and, of course, rich people with manor houses and dark secrets.
In this case, the secrets involve a doctor, his wife, her sister who suffers from epilepsy and their baby. Yes, their baby.
There’s also a distinguished, titled, grandfather, whom Thursday calls “the atom man” — because he was one of the developers of the atomic bomb — as well as the local postman, his no-account son. Then there are the dead bodies that keep piling up like undelivered mail.
You (OK, I) don’t ever really, figure out whodunnit until the big reveal, and it’s never who I think dunnit — and usually it’s not even who Morse thinks dunnit —at first.
Sunday’s episode is all about atoms, sure, but there’s chemistry as well. Too bad Endeavour doesn’t endeavor to take a chance with that young woman.
If you love English mysteries, and love the old Inspector Morse, you will love young inspector Morse more.