Warning - This review contains spoiler alerts from the first episode of the final series of Endeavour which was aired on ITV on Sunday night.
After 10 years, the Inspector Morse prequel Endeavour is coming to an end on ITV and our hero is back - sober for now.
Series nine featuring three final episodes started last night with Prelude, a story written by Russell Lewis and directed by Endeavour star Shaun Evans.
All the familiar faces were back, with DS Endeavour Morse and DCI Fred Thursday (Roger Allam) leading investigations, supported by CS Reginald Bright (Anton Lesser), pathologist Dr Max DeBryn (James Bradshaw), DS Jim Strange (Sean Rigby) and Dorothea Frazil (Abigail Thaw).
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Morse was back in Oxford in 1972, after gardening leave in Lyme Regis to tackle his problem with alcohol and there was a definite sense of an ending in the air, as CS Bright announced his retirement and recommended DCI Thursday for promotion outside the city.
Lesser lights up the screen every time he appears and as he announced he wanted to 'see his men into safe harbour' it was clear he intended to break up his band of loyal detectives.
But not before solving a few more murders.
After 20 minutes Morse and his colleagues were already investigating two unexplained deaths - the body of a man was found in a college garden following a reception for Oxford Concert Orchestra, and a petty criminal from London known to DCI Thursday was found dead in a warehouse after being savagely beaten and nailed to the floor.
There was hardly time for these plot strands to be unravelled before we were confronted with a third body.
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This time it was a woman - Margeaux Quincannon, one of the leading lights of the orchestra who collapsed on stage during a concert performance.
My money was on orchestra director Sir Alexander Lermantov - played brilliantly by Nicholas Farrell - being the guilty party but his only crime may have been taking a shine to his young students.
While the back story to the orchestra killing was fully explained, I failed to grasp the details on the other two homicides and may need to watch this back.
It must be difficult to act and direct at the same time but Shaun Evans has mastered the art, and his expression when he realised that Joan Thursday's affections had transferred to a colleague was well worth watching.
There were fleeting glimpses of Oxford - Christ Church Meadow and the colleges - but a lot of the interior shots may have been filmed elsewhere.
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For Endeavour obsessives, it is the sub-plots about the detectives' private lives that make the series such a good watch, and DCI Thursday was looking troubled as his son Sam (Jack Bannon) was released from military prison and immediately hit the booze.
Very occasionally the dialogue sounded a little stilted - surely no-one would say 'hell hath no fury..' even in 1972.
With two episodes remaining there is still time to tie up any loose ends and I fear DCI Thursday's London past will come back to haunt him.
The next episode - Uniform - is on Sunday on ITV1 at 8pm.
Rating: 4/5
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This story was written by Andy Ffrench, he joined the team more than 20 years ago and now covers community news across Oxfordshire.
Get in touch with him by emailing: Andy.ffrench@newsquest.co.uk
Follow him on Twitter @OxMailAndyF
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