Marking the 30th anniversary of Morse on ITV, popular detective drama, Endeavour, returns for a highly anticipated fourth series, penned by acclaimed writer Russell Lewis.

Reprising his role as the young Endeavour Morse, Shauns Evans stars alongside stage and screen actor Roger Allam as mentor, Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, for a brand new set of complex cases.

The fourth series begins in the summer of 1967, barely a fortnight having passed since the events of the Series 3 finale, and we find Oxford’s finest picking up the pieces of their lives, both personal and professional. Whilst Thursday and wife, Win, struggle to process the departure of both their daughter Joan and son, Sam, who has joined the army, Endeavour waits nervously to hear the result of his Sergeant’s exam.

Throwing himself into his work to mask the heartache of Joan leaving, Endeavour is quickly consumed by his duties with an array of new, perplexing cases landing on his desk. The first episode of Endeavour is on ITV 1 on Sunday the 8th of January from 8:00pm to 10:00pm. Below you can read the synopsis for “Game” as well as see promotional pictures from that episode.

The ‘white heat’ of technology takes centre stage in the first film, as Lovelace College is taken over by a team of research scientists who are developing a ‘thinking’ machine to equal and even outstrip the capabilities of man’s own mind. As a Russian academic prepares to do battle with the Joint Computing Nexus (JCN or Jason for short) in a game of chess, the Cold War is played out on a chequered field and Endeavour and Thursday are plunged into their most perilous, baffling and darkly terrifying case to date. Throwing himself into his work to mask the heartache of Joan’s departure, Endeavour is quickly consumed by his duties when one of the research team is found drowned near Magdalen Bridge. Assuming it to be a suicide on first inspection, the circumstances become more suspicious when two more victims are also found drowned nearby in East Cowley Baths. Is there more to the deaths than meets the eye?

With thanks to ITV Media.