'Endeavour' Returns For a Fourth Round of 'Morse'

The exceedingly popular Inspector Morse prequel spin-off Endeavour rolls into its fourth season, as Endeavour Morse awaits his future that we all know will come eventually. And yet, despite the inevitability of a prequel reboot's future being set in stone years before, the tensions still run high.

DCI Morse: "I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination."

ITV spent most of the 1980s in a rebuilding pattern after the strike of 1979 shut it down for months and left it without programming for even longer. Out of this rebuild came several popular series, pulled from popular UK mystery and drama writers, from Brideshead Revisited, to PD James' Adam Dalgliesh, to The Jewel In The Crown.

But perhaps one of the biggest successes came when Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series arrived in 1987. Though the show was nominally a "mystery of the week" series in two hour installments, it was just as much a cultural phenomenon. Morse wasn't your avergae little grey cell tapping detective, but a fantasy of a highbrow educated British everyman: a hard drinking, jaguar driving, crossword doing, Oxford educated genius working class policeman.