Endeavour Airs on Masterpiece Mystery, Sunday July 1st

The Inspector Morse prequel Endeavour airs this Sunday, July 1st, on PBS's Masterpiece Mystery! (Check your local listings.) Originally airing as a stand-alone episode, it is now considered a pilot for the series, as ITV has commissioned four additional episodes to air in 2013.

Shaun Evans stars as the young Endeavour Morse, who was played by John Thaw in the original series. The character was created by crime novelist Colin Dexter, who will act as a consultant to the new series.

It is 1965, and a 15-year-old Oxford schoolgirl, last seen waiting alone in the rain at a bus stop on early Sunday morning, has disappeared and is presumed dead. The hunt for Mary Tremlett draws rookie Detective Endeavour Morse, the conflicted young detective on the verge of resignation, back to the university he'd suddenly left only a few years before. Stuck between town and gown, he is patronized by his arrogant old rival, now ascending the ivory tower, and scorned by a DS contemptuous of the "college boy". Only the former opera diva Rosalind Stromming, wife of an Oxford tutor with a murky connection to the missing girl, can offer him solace as he tries to navigate a hostile supervisor, the ghosts of his past, and a mystery that deepens with another tragic death. Discredited and at a dead-end, the solitary and cerebral Endeavour drives his first Jaguar, drinks his first pint and, to the sublime strains of opera, fights for the truth as he forges the identity that will someday become Inspector Morse.

Watch a teaser trailer for the episode below.