Endeavour - Black Double Arrow Station Sign

[StephenHunter]

The latest episode of this ITV drama, now up to 1971, has a number of scenes at "Cowley East", the opening shot literally showing a black station sign with a double arrow on. I can't get a screengrab from ITV Hub itself, but the episode is here:

Endeavour - Series 8 - Episode 2 - ITVX

Endeavour and the team are called to investigate the murder of a cab driver found dead in his taxi on the outskirts of Oxford.

www.itv.com

Any comments on this? Accuracy etc. I remember the fun we had with the last railway-set episode of this show...

 

[John Luxton]

The latest episode of this ITV drama, now up to 1971, has a number of scenes at "Cowley East", the opening shot literally showing a black station sign with a double arrow on. I can't get a screengrab from ITV Hub itself, but the episode is here:

Endeavour - Series 8 - Episode 2 - ITVX

Endeavour and the team are called to investigate the murder of a cab driver found dead in his taxi on the outskirts of Oxford.

www.itv.com

Any comments on this? Accuracy etc. I remember the fun we had with the last railway-set episode of this show...

I watched that episode of Endeavour on ITV Hub last night.

Looking at the architecture if "Cowley East" - it just didn't look like a railway station.

To be quite honest it looked like a stable block around a stable yard with a station name attached to it.

It certainly was NOT a railway station!

John

 

[yorksrob]

Cowley East didn't look right (if it has existed, Beeching would have done for it), but they'd done enough for me to suspend disbelief. The BR sign of white on a black background looked spot on to me for post Beeching background.

Series superb like all of them have been

 

[John Luxton]

Cowley East didn't look right (if it has existed, Beeching would have done for it), but they'd done enough for me to suspend disbelief. The BR sign of white on a black background looked spot on to me for post Beeching background.

Series superb like all of them have been

Yes I agree Endeavour has been one of the best recent police period dramas in recent times, perhaps since the demise of Heartbeat.

I get a lot of fun when watching these programmes to spot the anachronisms which creep in or the transport errors!

John

 

[yorksrob]

Yes I agree Endeavour has been one of the best recent police period dramas in recent times, perhaps since the demise of Heartbeat.

I get a lot of fun when watching these programmes to spot the anachronisms which creep in or the transport errors!

John

I enjoy sitting characters and references from classic Morse and even Lewis cropping up from time to time.

 

[32475]

The station signage was a bit dodgy and you could see the props department had tried but it wasn’t quite authentic enough. For one thing, the station looked far too neat and tidy for 1971 which was arguably in the period when the rail network was at its scruffiest.
Mrs 32475 is very tolerant of me passing derogatory comments about any film or drama with vintage railway scenes because I can’t resist telling her or anyone within earshot about any inaccuracies and wish that the film producers had consulted me or anyone else on this forum first!
Having said that, Endeavour is excellent viewing and with a good production budget for its period props.

 

[StephenHunter]

I pulled out my Corporate Identity Manual when I saw it and the red box isn't quite right.

 

[STEVIEBOY1]

I did wonder about the authenticity about that episode too - railwise?

I just saw the following episode which featured buses in Oxford, they looked more like London Routemasters, certainly the seat coverings looked like that used on London Buses then. The only old thing was a green stripe around the bus.

 

[John Luxton]

I did wonder about the authenticity about that episode too - railwise?

I just saw the following episode which featured buses in Oxford, they looked more like London Routemasters, certainly the seat coverings looked like that used on London Buses then. The only old thing was a green stripe around the bus.

Definitely looked like London Buses and rather out of place. Also the reference to "bus corporation" on the ticket that was found.

Has there been any bus operator in the UK known as a "bus corporation" except in the context of "corporation transport"?

What appeared in Endeavour suggested that corporation was being used in the American sense.

Interesting to note the conductor's name was Mr Grant obviously a nod to Bob Grant who played the conductor Jack Harper in "On the Buses" and obviously not a random coincidence.

If someone could go to the trouble of doing that with a character name would be no more difficult to use authentic bus company name "City of Oxford Motor Services"

Also interesting was the suggestion the bus had a 30 minute lay-over at the terminus before returning. How many last buses hang around at an out of town terminus for 30 minutes late at night, in particular on the last run of the day?

 

[Falcon1200]

I just saw the following episode which featured buses in Oxford, they looked more like London Routemasters, certainly the seat coverings looked like that used on London Buses then. The only old thing was a green stripe around the bus.

As soon as I saw that bus I remarked to the wife (who was not remotely interested) 'that's never an Oxford bus' ! We certainly did not have Routemasters in Oxford in 1971 (or indeed ever ?). It was a pity because genuine preserved Oxford buses have appeared in earlier episodes of Endeavour.

I did wonder about the authenticity about that episode too - railwise?

The Cowley station in Oxford was called Morris Cowley, and it looked nothing like Cowley East !

 

[4COR]

The Cowley station in Oxford was called Morris Cowley, and it looked nothing like Cowley East !

And by 1971, it had been closed to passengers for 8 years!

 

[talltim]

I pulled out my Corporate Identity Manual when I saw it and the red box isn't quite right.

To be fair, a lot of real uses of the logo and other corporate identity elements are wrong too

 

[STEVIEBOY1]

Definitely looked like London Buses and rather out of place. Also the reference to "bus corporation" on the ticket that was found.

Has there been any bus operator in the UK known as a "bus corporation" except in the context of "corporation transport"?

What appeared in Endeavour suggested that corporation was being used in the American sense.

Interesting to note the conductor's name was Mr Grant obviously a nod to Bob Grant who played the conductor Jack Harper in "On the Buses" and obviously not a random coincidence.

If someone could go to the trouble of doing that with a character name would be no more difficult to use authentic bus company name "City of Oxford Motor Services"

Also interesting was the suggestion the bus had a 30 minute lay-over at the terminus before returning. How many last buses hang around at an out of town terminus for 30 minutes late at night, in particular on the last run of the day?

Yes, I noted that about Mr Grant too. There was also a recruitment poster in the back ground that had been defaced and looked very much like one I recall seeing in an On The Buses episode.