Merit, Abandoned

Masterpiece Theatre, an anthology series that used to run on PBS and is now found on streaming platforms (in my case, Amazon), pulled me down the rabbit hole that is British television. It led me to Britbox and Acorn, and I find myself watching more from those services than almost any other. Somewhere in that mix I watched the full run of Inspector Morse, which in turn led me to the prequel series Endeavour, produced a dozen years after the end of the first series but taking place in the titular character's early years as a constable/detective.

Endeavour Morse was a brilliant detective, but he was also quirky and iconoclastic and indifferent-to-hostile to the politics and posturing that suffused the constabulary. His character arc in the prequel series was counterpointed by that of one of his colleagues, Jim Strange. Strange wasn't a bad constable, nor a bad detective, but he wasn't in Morse's league. What he was good at, though, was playing the political game, and that eventually elevated him above Morse in rank.