'Endeavour's Final Season to Debut on PBS in June 2023

A decade ago, in 2013, Endeavour first crossed the pond for PBS viewers on Masterpiece. The series was the third in a line of mysteries based on the Inspector Morse series of novels by Colin Dexter, initially debuting in the 1980s and was Mystery!'s first successful non-period-set police procedural series from across the pond. But despite speculation the prequel series, which took the show back to Morse's early years, might run long enough to catch up with the original, that is not to be. After ten years on the air, the series will conclude with Season 9 debuting on PBS in June 2023.

The late Colin Dexter, who passed away in 2017 during Endeavour's run, first published Morse starting in 1975 with Last Bus to Woodstock. By his seventh release in 1986, ITV had optioned the rights for a TV adaptation, which premiered the following year, and then crossed the pond to PBS in 1988. Starring John Thaw as the titular intellectual Morse and Kevin Whately as his sidekick, salt of the Earth DS Lewis, the series proved so popular it ran until just before Thaw's passing in 2000.

However, a rerun of the series celebrating the series' 15th anniversary proved so popular ITV tested a pilot staring Whatlety, having been promoted to DI after Morse's passing, and his new intellectual DS Hathaway (Laurence Fox) in a reversal of the original show's formula. It ran from 2006 to 2015, the same 33-episode length as the original, before being retired. By then, Endeavour, featuring Shaun Evans as a young Morse in the 1960s and his salt-of-the-Earth DI Fred Thursday (Roger Allam), has hit it big, keeping the franchise going through the 2010s.