Sara Vickers, who plays Joan Thursday in the hit drama Endeavour, has opened up about one storyline from season eight that had a negative response for fans.
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Chatting to Radio Times, she revealed that she knew that there was a mixed response to Joan's new relationship, saying: "I know there has been a bit of a mixed response to the Joan/Jim situation. Endeavour has had lots of dalliances along the way and Joan’s had one difficult relationship with a married man so you knew that was never going to end well.
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"But it’s funny that the first time we’ve ventured into the possibility that she could go elsewhere and there’s a bit of an uproar!"
Speaking about their relationship, she added: "They are. Actually he’s such a down-to-earth, dependable guy, he’s funny, he makes her laugh and he’s sweet and caring. With those scenes that we had together I was thinking, ‘Is this going to work? Are people going to buy into this?’ But as soon as we did the read-through, I was just like, ‘Oh my God!’ Sean just does it so well that you totally buy into it."
What did you think of the romance?
At the time, fans were quick to discuss the burgeoning relationship, with one fan writing: "If you’d like to know, I’m taking the Strange and Joan thing exceptionally badly.” Another person wrote: "I like Strange and all, and he'd be really good to Joan, but ugh Morse what are you doing, you moron?!”
Shaun has previously opened up about how the show has approached his character's eternal bachelor status, which does seem to support the theory that Joan ends up marrying someone close to him.
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He told Radio Times: “What we meet in the Inspector Morse series, or indeed if you pick up the books, there's a guy who never ends up getting married, and is kind of the broken at the beginning… So we have to have a bit of romance now in order to take us to that point. There has to be a sort of heartbreak thing. So I think just narratively there does need to be."
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