Most critics like Endeavour, and the praise gathers around two people: Shaun Evans as the young Morse and Roger Allam as his boss, DI Fred Thursday. Reviewers credit Evans with building a plausible early Morse, prickly, intellectually contemptuous and fixed on the truth, without imitating John Thaw. The pairing with Allam’s world-weary Thursday is singled out again and again, and Russell Lewis’s writing is commended for catching the spirit of the books. The period Oxford detail is generally found convincing rather than fussy.
The reservations are few and mild. The spread is narrow, with the reviews sitting between good and very good and only one landing in the middle. That one is The Telegraph, which finds the series well made but without the sharp characterisation and weight of the original, and calls the plotting leaden. Even the warmer reviews describe the cases as cryptic and sometimes gruesome, though they offer that as a virtue rather than a complaint. Nobody dislikes it.