I think this discussion has gone a different and more general place than the point I was trying to make in the article. It's not that Endeavour should present young Morse as Gene Hunt, because Morse has never been Gene Hunt; I don't think he was ever presented as racist in the original series, for example, and I think I recall in the aforementioned episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts" that his classical education made him less dismissive of the Greek characters than some other officers. I was referring to the specific point that if Morse in the 80s has to be convinced of the value of women in the police force, it doesn't make any sense for him to be the one defending women in the police force in the 60s (especially when there wasn't an integrated police force in reality at all). It is not as if that prevents one featuring Morse sparring with strong female characters, because they already do that successfully with Abigail Thaw's editor character.
This is distinct from the point of shifting values over time and whether this alienates an audience. Morse in the original series was often seen as old-fashioned and out of step with the modern world in many ways (such as his musical tastes) and often Lewis had to be the one telling him to move with the times when it came to certain values. That didn't stop Morse being a sympathetic character who we felt had a heart in the right place (which, as I said in the article, is much more apparent in the TV series than the books where he comes across as more amoral). What I was objecting to is not putting modern values in the 60s (which, as I said, Endeavour doesn't actually do that much) but the idea that our protagonist has to be the one taking the more modern standpoint, when we never cared before if Morse was crusty and backward and had to be tactfully corrected by Lewis. It feels like the writers of Endeavour are determined to make young Morse the audience surrogate and bang square peg into round hole (aren't we all Oxonian college dropouts named after Captain Cook's ship?), when in the past, if anything, the everyman Lewis was probably the audience surrogate (as the traditional 'Watson').
Only vaguely related: I am far from the first person to observe this, but on watching the 1979 Alec Guinness adaptation of Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, one thing period pieces will never get right (and for understandable reasons) is just how much people smoked in the mid-20th century. There's usually a nod to it in modern period pieces, but in the real thing it's so omnipresent that it almost feels like an exaggerated parody.
This is distinct from the point of shifting values over time and whether this alienates an audience. Morse in the original series was often seen as old-fashioned and out of step with the modern world in many ways (such as his musical tastes) and often Lewis had to be the one telling him to move with the times when it came to certain values. That didn't stop Morse being a sympathetic character who we felt had a heart in the right place (which, as I said in the article, is much more apparent in the TV series than the books where he comes across as more amoral). What I was objecting to is not putting modern values in the 60s (which, as I said, Endeavour doesn't actually do that much) but the idea that our protagonist has to be the one taking the more modern standpoint, when we never cared before if Morse was crusty and backward and had to be tactfully corrected by Lewis. It feels like the writers of Endeavour are determined to make young Morse the audience surrogate and bang square peg into round hole (aren't we all Oxonian college dropouts named after Captain Cook's ship?), when in the past, if anything, the everyman Lewis was probably the audience surrogate (as the traditional 'Watson').
Only vaguely related: I am far from the first person to observe this, but on watching the 1979 Alec Guinness adaptation of Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, one thing period pieces will never get right (and for understandable reasons) is just how much people smoked in the mid-20th century. There's usually a nod to it in modern period pieces, but in the real thing it's so omnipresent that it almost feels like an exaggerated parody.