Becoming Morse in Endeavour: the prequel as locus of reconstruction of the past?

Abstract

This paper examines Endeavour (ITV, 2012-), a prequel to Colin Dexter’s and ITV’s Inspector Morse (1987-2000), which was initially aired in 2012 for the 25th anniversary of Morse’s first TV appearance. This new series introduced the audience to young Morse, played by Shaun Evans, at the time of his first years as police in Oxford. In so doing, the prequel reconstructs the past on the basis of threads in the source narrative. After discussing the specificities of the prequel genre in relation to Endeavour, this paper purports to examine the transformative effects of this reconstruction: how the prequel may or may not reconstruct the past of the hero, and how in so doing it may also reconstruct the memory of the viewer, his or her perception of the past, in terms of the source narrative.