‘Endeavour’ explores the early years of Inspector Morse

Above : Shaun Evans and Roger Allam star in “Endeavour.” (Photo: PBS)

Like many Public Television viewers, I’m a fan of British mysteries. I’ve watched a number of the various productions, from “Sherlock” and “Grantchester” to “Happy Valley” and “Broadchurch.”

And while I happened to catch a few of the more classic series, such as “Inspector Morse,” I never had the opportunity to watch all of what the adaptation of the Colin Dexter novels had to offer. Same with the first spinoff, “Lewis.”

Thanks to Amazon Prime, however, my wife and I have been lately bingeing on “Endeavour,” the prequel series starring Shaun Evans as the young Morse – Endeavour being the character’s little-used first name.

“Endeavour” is set in the mid-1960s, in Oxford, England, and our protagonist is a young Oxford dropout who, after serving a couple of years as a uniformed constable, has just been appointed as detective in the criminal-investigation section of the city police department.

Taken under the wing by Detective Inspector Fred Thursday ( Roger Allam ), the young Morse shows great promise as a crime investigator – even if he proves to be no great shakes as a police officer.

And as anyone who watched the series featuring the older version of Morse (which stars John Thaw ), we see early on the character traits that will shape – and in some cases hinder – his career: his drinking, his keen intelligence and sometimes mistaken rush to judgment, his tendency to distrust his superiors (and vice-versa), his inability to maintain relationships … and so on.

Amazon Prime is currently streaming seven seasons of the series, each season consisting of four hour-and-half-long episodes. We’ve worked our way through the first three episodes of Season 3.

And that means we have a lot of watching still to do. And then maybe we’ll go on and watch the older series – which in 2000 the British Film Institute rated as No. 42 on the list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.

As long as this pandemic lasts, it’s comforting to know that there’s still so much good stuff to stream.

All while staying safely at home.