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| “ | Burkitt: On the other hand, if Morse could be persuaded to do the right thing... Thursday: He's an idealist. Burkitt: Sure, we all are. Thursday: Maybe once, Councillor. Now you're just a villain. Same as this two-bob shitehawk. Burkitt: Look... you play fair and all your troubles... disappear. The cheque, gone. Everything back to how it was. Just bring him out to Wicklesham tomorrow. Maybe between us, we can talk some sense into him. |
„ |
| ~ Burkitt and Thursday's confrontation. |
| “ | I'm here in a purely advisory capacity, Reginald. A trouble-shooter, if you like. | „ |
| ~ Burkitt to Bright. |
Councillor Clive Burkitt was a supporting antagonist in the Series 6 of Endeavour, appearing only in the season finale "Degüello".
Burkitt was an Oxford city councillor and the man who oversaw the building of Cranmer House, a new apartment in the Martyrs' Field, but in secret he and his partner George McGryffin used cheap and unsafe materials to build the apartment in order to graft expenses from it. He was later revealed to be a partner of Alan Jago and one of the people that Ronnie Box answered to.
He was portrayed by Alexander Hanson, who previously portrayed Francis Mitchell in Lewis.
Biography[]
Counciler Clive Burkitt was an Oxford councilor and the man who oversaw the building of Cranmer House, a new apartment in the Martyrs' Field. He once made promises to the citizens during his election that he would provide a new and safe house for them, and had placed Mrs. Oliver Reynolds and her daughter Sandra into the house as its first residents.
Nevertheless, a year after the Cranmer House was opened, something horrible began to happen. Turned out, the Cranmer House was actually built poorly and had severe construction problems in its materials. The construction of Cranmer House was started by George McGryffin, a construct magnate who worked with Burkitt to graft money from the expenses of building the Cranmer House.
According to the research of Dr. DeBryn, as well as the later discovery of Morse, the Cranmer House was built with concrete that contained unwashed sea sands within it. The sodium within the sand had been corroding the structure itself, causing the wall to crack before it finally gave away a year after its construction was completed. It was revealed that McGryffin used cheaper and less firm materials to build the construction, so that he and it could graft money from them.
During the construction of Cranmer House, the local borough surveyor Hollis Binks discovered this scam and attempted to expose McGryffin and Burkitt. However, McGryffin sent his minions and buried Binks alive in the foundation with cement, so that there would be no one would expose their secret.
A year later, as the controversy of Cranmer House arised, Burkitt only tried to keep his good name and disregarded the early alarming informed by Mrs. Reynolds. Meanwhile, Osbert Page, a chief librarian who was a close friend to Binks, began to investigate Binks' disappearance, but he was stabbed to death by McGryffin's henchman.
Eventually, the House Cranmer partially collapsed, killing sixteen men, women, and children, and injuring many others, including Mrs. Reynolds and her daughter. Soon, all kinds of media and press, including Dorothea Frazil from the Oxford Mail, immediately gathered around Burkitt. When Frazil questioned about the Cranmer House's potential danger prior to its collapse, Burkitt was evasive towards it and made a flimsy explanation that it was caused by gas explosion.
Seeing Morse as an obstacle, Burkitt and McGryffin did everything to stop him. First, McGryffin tried to persuade Strange to turn on Morse in exchange of Strange being promoted to an inspector. Later, they tried to used their own connection in the city police, the seemly righteous ACC Bottoms, to persuade Bright into joining their business in exchange of leaving the traffic division. When Bright rejected, McGryffin sent his henchmen in an attempt to kill Bright in the street. Fortunately, this was foiled when a flock of children gather around Bright, all being fans of him thanks to his "Pelican Man" persona in traffic ads, and asked for his autograph.
After that, Burkitt and McGryffin discovered from Ronnie Box, who was secretly working for them to share their profits, that Thursday quitted their business. Burkitt and McGryffin made Box take Thursday to him. They informed that they already knew that Thursday's unscrupulous brother Charlie was in debt, and Thursday was forced to pay a cheque and paid the debt for him. They blackmailed Thursday that they would cease such a record for him if he could stop Morse from digging further into the investigation.
However, Thursday eventually sided with Morse. Burkit and McGryffin later sent their minions to beat up Dr. DeBryn and had him kidnapped, not long after he had discovered the possible identity of Page's killer, who was revealed to be McGryffin's henchman. To save DeBryn, Morse had gathered the rest of the Cranmer boys - Thursday, Bright and Strange - all the way to an abandoned quarry to rescue DeBryn.
After the downfall of Alan Jago, who was behind everything associated with corruption, drug wars and George Fancy's murder, Burkitt and McGryffin were arrested alongside other minions of Jago. However, Burkitt betrayed his partners and gave them all out in an act of cowardice to earn a lighter sentence in prison.
Trivia[]
- The collapse of Cranmer House is clearly suggested by the real-life tragic collapse of Ronan Point, a London tower-block in the Canning Town district. It partially collapsed in May 1968, about eighteen months before the events in this Endeavour story take place. Four people died and another seventeen were injured in the collapse.
- Like Cranmer House, the Ronan Point collapse was initially ascribed to a gas explosion, but later its chief cause was found to be alarming structural deficiencies. As a result of the Ronan Point tragedy, laws were changed and made more stringent.
- The actors of both Burkitt and McGryffin were previously cast in Lewis.
- Like his partners, Burkitt's role in the Thames Valley corruption corresponded to one of the criminal leaders in the Blenheim Vale tragedy from "Neverland". In Burkitt's case, he is similar to Gerald Wintergreen.
- Both Burkitt and Wintergreen are greedy and heartless politicians, who valued their profits and good names above all else, and tried to conceal their crimes in order to keep their publicity. Both also threatened Thursday to stay away from their business.
- However, Burkitt went even further than Wintergreen that he exploited Thursday's dreadful situation with what happened to the latter's brother, and asked Thursday to keep Morse quiet as well. On the other hand, Wintergreen merely threatened Thursday but was killed before he could carry on more plans.
External Links[]
- Clive Burkitt on the Pure Evil Wiki.
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