The last time I interviewed Shaun Evans, we both had a little cry. Me, because I’d been poorly and watching every episode of his peerless Endeavour had sustained me through three bedbound months. Him… well, because he’s a very nice man, and also because he recognised the import of saying goodbye to young Morse after nine series. We signed off saying, “We will speak again.”
“I was interested in playing a man having a midlife crisis,” says Evans. “Plus, there’s always an appetite for the spy genre, so I was curious to see if we could mix together those two. At work, he follows his instincts and it ends in catastrophe. His marriage is on the rocks. The four episodes trace his attempts to solve these seemingly intractable problems.”
The two key themes in the show are the world of espionage, and the act of betrayal. For the first, producers recruited former BBC security correspondent- turned-podcaster Gordon Corera as production adviser. For the second? “I always think imagination is more important than knowledge,” says Evans. “It’s interesting to play these characters who are different from you, and find the reason for why they behave as they do. That’s the job, making the imaginative leap.” It’s a full and considered answer that gives nothing away. He’d make a good spy.
More generally, he’s been using accents as a tool since he graduated from the Guildhall School of Drama over 20 years ago. “When I first started, I wanted to play parts far away from me, to transform into someone else and leave any of my baggage behind.”
When we last spoke, Evans – credited with not just matching the quality of the much-loved Morse but perhaps surpassing it – was planning to give himself a proper, extended break, what he called “decompression”, after playing the same character for nine intense years.
Now Evans is once again a jobbing actor, albeit one whose name can greenlight primetime projects, life must feel quite different from the days when he was working flat out as title star, producer and sometime director on a massive TV franchise. “There are pros and cons,” he says. “Every element of Endeavour was joyful, and all those people are still in my life.”
Even though his Oxford detective is often to be found on ITV3 in the afternoon, Evans rarely watches this or any other screen appearance. “I hope everyone else enjoys it but, for me, I’d rather focus on the day, and then step back and leave it. I love the freedom of being a gun for hire, just going in and doing a good job. What gets my juices flowing? The work itself.”
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I was really intrigued. You have a marital drama interspersed with a high-stakes geopolitical espionage storyline, and they’re given almost the same weight in terms of the story, which felt unusual and fresh to me.
It’s bonkers but accurate. I always thought there’d be an inner ring of confidence where people can share, but the Official Secrets Act covers a lot. It can’t be conducive to a good marriage and theirs is definitely fragmented. Initially, he’s the holder of all this information, but the balance of power soon starts to shift.
When I began, it was all career, ambition and opportunity but, at some point, you realise it’s not just about you. If I’m to be away from my children, it has to be worth it. I need to feel like I’m doing interesting work. Storytelling was always a big thing for me.
It’s very different. When I was in my teens and 20s, it wouldn’t be uncommon for there to be no women on set at all, apart from the actors. And people didn’t seem to find it odd. I think there has been a systemic top-down attempt to change that. It would be very unusual now to have an all-male creative team. There’s also the growing understanding that women want to see themselves depicted in different ways on screen, with all the various shades of what it means to be a woman.
It’s weird because that show didn’t do any numbers and it was cancelled after two series, but more than anything else I’ve ever been in, people still come up to me and say, “I loved it, I don’t understand why it ended.” It’s really nice to have been in something that people really love.
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