Endeavour Series Return Sunday 8 Jan on ITV

Marking the 30th anniversary of the first broadcast of Inspector Morse on ITV, the fourth season, which premieres with the episode Game on Sunday 8 January at 8.00pm on ITV, sees star Shaun Evans reprise his role as the young Endeavour Morse alongside stage and screen actor Roger Allam as mentor Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, for a brand new set of complex cases.

Also reprising their roles are Anton Lesser as Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright, Sean Rigby as PC Jim Strange, James Bradshaw as Doctor Max deBryn, Caroline O’Neil as Win Thursday, Dakota Blue Richards as WPC Shirley Trewlove, and Abigail Thaw – original Inspector Morse star John Thaw’s daughter – as Dorothea Frazil.

The fourth series begins in the summer of 1967, barely a fortnight having passed since the events of the Series 3 finale, and we find Oxford’s finest picking up the pieces of their lives, both personal and professional. Whilst Thursday and wife, Win, struggle to process the departure of both their daughter Joan and son, Sam, who has joined the army, Endeavour waits nervously to hear the result of his Sergeant’s exam.

The future is within touching distance in the first film, as Lovelace College is taken over by a team of research scientists who are developing a calculating, ‘thinking’ machine to equal and even outstrip the capabilities of man’s own mind. Named the Joint Computing Nexus (JCN or Jason for short), the forward-thinking technology will plunge Endeavour and Thursday into their most perilous, baffling and darkly terrifying case to date.

Throwing himself into his work to mask the heartache of Joan leaving, Endeavour is quickly consumed by his duties when one of the research team is found drowned near Magdalen Bridge. Assuming it to be a suicide, the circumstances become more suspicious when two more victims are also found drowned. Is there more to the deaths than meets the eye?

Colin Dexter, whose first Morse story was published in 1975, continues his association with the drama, acting as a consultant to Endeavour producers.

Endeavour: Game airs on Sunday 8 January 2017 from 8.00pm-10.00pm on ITV

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