Spode was Hanged?

[Plynkes]

So I was watching  Endeavour last night, the 1960s nostalgia prequel series to Morse and Lewis. The plot was about a murder on an army base, and among the umpteen red-herring subplots we had Twiggy-esque models, protestors protesting a colour-bar at a hairdressers, police racism and aging 1930s British fascists (yeah, Endeavour is always like this, a million things going on so you have no chance of guessing who the killer is).

Anyway there was a point where Morse and his boss Thursday interview some aristocratic lady muck, whose husband had back in the day been a bigwig among the BUF. Thursday, being a WWII veteran at one point loses his rag with the old cow and her flippant and unrepentant continuing support of fascism. Talking about her now-deceased husband he then says something along the lines of,


"...he should have been hanged, along with Spode and the rest of them!"



Wait, what? Spode? Roderick Spode? Amateur dictator and leader of the Black Shorts? So from this we can conclude that Morse lives in the same universe as Bertie Wooster(!), and that Spode eventually danced the Tyburn jig?

Blimey. I thought that was a lovely little throwaway touch in the episode. I was laughing about that so much that I completely lost track of the whodunnit (which doesn't really ever matter with Endeavour, as it is always so convoluted anyway).

Heil Spode!

[S_P]

Nice spot. Not seen the TV show mentioned.

However, in a  megagame game universe I've umpired in Spode died leading a ill-advised counterattack just outside Doncaster. It inspired one of those angry Hitler from Downfall videos:

[Plynkes]

  Ha, you know I was entirely sick of those things a few years ago, but I think it has been long enough that they are no longer annoying.

"It's the skulls, isn't it?" feels like a Mitchell and Webb  reference. That "Are we the baddies?" sketch. 

[Doug ex-em4]

Very entertaining, S_P; never seen one of those videos before - thanks for introducing me to it/them.

I notice that last week’s Endeavour had a middle-aged model railway nerd who lived with his mum as the villain and this week the military history lecturer who “plays with toy soldiers” was the baddie (as soon as he appeared my wife said “it’s him”) and I seem to remember an episode of Morse that had a teenage D&D player as a murderer. We could do with a rerun of Callan to even things up😊

Doug

[Red Orc]

Really interesting to know that Spode appears in Endeavour!

There was a couple in Coronation Street about 10 years ago called Spode too. Maybe some of the progeny lived on.

[Arlequín]

We could do with a rerun of Callan to even things up😊

A guy who used torture and carried out extrajudicial killings is not really helping the image.

Any film with Peter Cushing is more of a positive; commanding the Death Star apart.

 

[has.been]

Loved the clip, thanks for posting.

[Doug ex-em4]

A guy who used torture and carried out extrajudicial killings is not really helping the image.

Any film with Peter Cushing is more of a positive; commanding the Death Star apart.

 

I think the “image” is lost beyond all redemption😊

Doug

[Red Orc]

Apologies for the threadomancy but I watched this episode today.

Honestly Endeavour is blowing my mind at the moment. Yesterday I watched one where Morse went to the Crossroads Motel near Birmingham - reference to the long-running, much-revived soap-opera of the '60s-'80s, '80s-'90s and noughties. This is in fact the 'model railway nerd' episode that Doug em4 is referring to above.

It wasn't just Spode that got a mention in this episode. The line Plynkes quotes was something like '...should have hanged with Spode, Webley and the rest of them'. 'Webley' is surely a reference to Everard Webley, leader of the Brotherhood of British Freemen, a proto-fascist group from Point-Counterpoint by Aldous Huxley.

The aristocratic family (part of it at least, the family relationships are complicated) was called 'Creighton-Ward' - the name of Lady Penelope from the Thunderbirds. There's also a servant called 'Barker' (guess they bottled calling him 'Parker').

While at the regimental HQ, Morse is involved in a conversation about regimental history when mention is made of '...the boy who saved the Colours at M'boto Gorge'. As every fan of Blackadder knows, the engagement at M'boto Gorge was fought c.1892, probably in West Africa, and included (as well as the South Oxfordshire Regiment featured in the episode) the 19/45th East African Rifles, which is Edmund Blackadder's former regiment, along with General Haig (who was presumably at that point a Lieutenant or maybe Captain). There is reference in Blackadder to an attack with 'a particularly vicious piece of mango'.

Honestly it's so densely-written, with so many references to other works, that it seems to be inhabiting an entire imaginary universe.

But the fact that people who build model railways and/or play with toy soldiers are continually depicted as sexually-frustrated obsessive nerds is... pretty much standard I think. Ironic when the writers are so obviously massive nerds themselves.

[Blackwolf]

Endeavour is great,so many things going on,all the sly tips of the hat; also great if you like old Brit cars (as I do,owning a MG and a 52 Morris Oxford),I think the first episode brought Endeavour to a used car lot where Jag MK II was for sale,his car in the future Morse series.