Colours

Summer 1968, and the heat is not just weather. Racial tensions are rising all over Oxford: a debate featuring a former member of the British Union of Fascists, a protest outside a hair salon that only serves white patrons, and a city that keeps pretending it is above all of it.

Into this comes a murder at an army base. Thursday's son Sam is one of the soldiers escorting three fashion models during a photo shoot, and one of the models turns up dead. The evidence points at a friend of Sam's, a black soldier, and he is arrested. Joan Thursday joins the protest outside the salon and is among those detained when a riot breaks out; Strange quietly arranges for her release without charge. And when the body of the fashion photographer is found on the base, Morse has to dig through long-held secrets to find the truth underneath the easy answer.

The episode uses 1968 properly: the unrest is not scenery, it is the fuel for both the crime and the strain running through the police and the Thursday household. Sam departs for his military deployment as the season closes, and the tension stays in the air after him.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Robert Quinn directed. Shaun Evans is DS Endeavour Morse, Roger Allam is DCI Fred Thursday, Caroline O'Neill is Win Thursday, Jules Robertson is the Debating Society President, Caroline Goodall is Lady Bayswater, Marcus Griffiths is Marcus X, Claire Ganaye is Claudine, Ray Sesay is Pte Oswald, Lee Armstrong is Pte Collier, and Ian Pirie is Lt Col Mad Jack McDuff.

The army base gives the episode a closed, formal setting that suits its themes of discipline and loyalty, and Sam's involvement keeps the Thursday family at the centre of it. The riot sequences are handled with restraint, but the anger behind them is unmistakable.

A season finale that wears its history on its sleeve, and is all the better for it.