Any more of this, I'm joining the Tories

World War II might be over, but the ramifications of the conflict continue to impact the lives of the characters in the latest season of Foyle's War.  Although set 8 of the series won't be available in the US until April 14, you can watch it now online on Acorn TV.  Why not give the free month's membership a try and watch this excellent series?

 Former policeman Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen) is still working at investigating crimes, although now it's at the behest of MI5, the British intelligence agency.  He is ably assisted by his driver, Sam Wainwright, played by Honeysuckle Weeks.  Sam is married to MP Adam Wainwright, so in addition to her day job she must find ways to support her husband when he encounters difficulties of his own.

The three episodes of Set 8 all portray situations which have their roots in events that happened during the war.  Episode One, High Castle, opens with a dead man discovered in the woods.  The man turns out to be a professor at University College, London.  In his pocket, police find the name and address of an American oil company executive, Clayton Del Mar.  While investigating the death, Foyle learns that the professor, William Knowles, was working as a translator at the Nuremberg trials.  Foyle visits Del Mar, and while he feels there's something suspicious about the man, his superiors don't want Foyle to upset the American too much.  Del Mar is negotiating with the Iranians in an attempt to get them to sell their oil to the British, rather than the Soviets.  If that's the case, why has he been spotted meeting with a Soviet agent?  At the same time, Sam's husband Adam is asked by one of his constituents to investigate a case of sex discrimination at the workplace.  She was given a supervisor's position at a factory during the war, but now that the men have returned she has been demoted and her job given to a man.  Adam must confront his own prejudices when he takes into account his own actions in pressuring Sam to turn in her resignation, since she's expecting a baby.  This episode features the delightful John Mahoney (known to Americans as the dad in the long-running series Frasier) as Del Mar's curmudgeonly, bed-ridden father.

The second episode, Trespass, deals with the still thorny issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  A man living in Palestine is arrested by British soldiers looking for Jewish terrorists.  Even though he was innocent, he has a heart attack and dies in custody.  His daughter, Lea, comes to London to study medicine and stays with her father's oldest friend, Rabbi Greenfeld and his family.  She is treated to a sight-seeing tour of London by the Greenfeld's son, Nicholas, who is a sound engineer.  Things are a bit tense in London as two meetings are planned which present great security threats.  The first is a speech being held by Charles Lucas, a Fascist and leader of the International Unity Party.  With the rationing and shortages caused by the war impacting the lives of everyone, Lucas finds a ready audience for this claims that immigrants and Jews are responsible for all the problems.  While Foyle and his superiors are concerned about the possibilities for violence and rioting if Lucas riles up the crowd, the local police seem remarkably unconcerned about the potential for problems.  The second event that is happening in London is a large international conference about the Jewish-Palestinian conflict.  During this time, Foyle is brought in to investigate the beating of a young Jewish student, Daniel Woolf.  The odd thing is that neither Daniel nor his parents seem to want the police to investigate the incident.  A few days later, the father, David Woolf, is shot and killed in his home.  Police suspect a terrorist organization, the Defenders of Arab Palestine, but Foyle isn't so sure that group is responsible.  Sam becomes concerned about a young boy with breathing problems.  Even though the National Health Service has been proposed, it has yet to be implemented and the poor are often prevented from receiving medical care due to lack of money.  When the Rabbi's family discovers Lea hasn't been admitted to medical school and seems to be missing, they wonder if she might have a secret reason for being in London.

Ms. Pierce, one of Foyle's colleagues at MI5, is approached by a young man who tells her "This is for Elise" before shooting her in the final episode, Elise.  As she recovers in the hospital, Foyle learns that during the war, Ms. Pierce was responsible for sending young female radio operators to France to work in the resistance.  Nine of the young women were identified, arrested and executed by the Germans in a very short period of time, leading the SOE (Special Operations Executive, the shadowy organization responsible for the work) to suspect that one of their members was a double-agent.  They called this person Plato, and opened an investigation to discover his or her identity, but never found out who it was.  Elise was the code name of one of the young women who was killed.  Foyle is fairly quickly able to identify her as Sophie Corrigan, and to discover that the man who shot Ms. Pierce was her brother, Miles.  Foyle has a late-night secret meeting with Miles, who says he plans to shoot everyone who was involved in getting his sister killed.  While Foyle wants to track down the people who were involved in the SOE war project, his bosses aren't that concerned with stirring up old events from the war.  Instead, they want Foyle to investigate the shady dealings of Damien White.  While White seems to be a legitimate businessman, MI5 is convinced he's heavily involved in the black market.  Once again, the police seem unconcerned with black market goods being openly sold on the streets.  Adam is also unconcerned, but his constituency chairman, Glenvil Harris (played by Jeremy Swift, known to Downton Abbey fans as Maggie Smith's butler, the disapproving Spratt), convinces him to investigate the black market goods, a situation which once again places both him and Sam in danger.

This set also features loads of interesting extras, including "A Day in the Life of Foyle's War," an interview with John Mahoney, and series creator Anthony Horowitz and historian Terry Charman discussing the real events behind each of the three episodes in this series.  Supposedly, due to the high costs of producing the series, this will be the last we'll see of Foyle's War (I was continually amazed at all the shots around London -- it must be terribly difficult to film without getting in any modern skyscrapers into the shots!). However, this has happened before, and the series came back due to public demand, so we can always hope that we haven't seen the last of Foyle and Sam!

Disclaimer:  I received access to Foyle's War on Acorn TV in exchange for this review

Final Verdict for Foyle's War, Set 8:    Four Gherkins, for being a welcome visit with old friends

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Though cowards flinch and traitors fear

The war may be over, but former DCS Christopher Foyle's talents are still required.  He's retired from the police force, but British Intelligence convinces him to work for them in Foyle's War, Set 7.  Michael Kitchen is back playing the investigator and Honeysuckle Weeks is back as his assistant Sam.

The new series of Foyle's War will be premiering on Masterpiece Mystery on PBS on Sept. 15.  Viewers can also stream the new episodes immediately after they're shown on PBS, as well as all 22 previous episodes from Acorn TV.  Sign up at Acorn TV now and get your free month of access so you can get caught up on all of the back stories from DCS Foyle!

In the first of 3 episodes in Set 7, The Eternity Ring, poor Foyle is basically ambushed as he arrives back in England from an extended trip to America.  A figure commands him to follow him to security headquarters.  Once there, Foyle is informed that his former assistant, Sam Wainwright, has been seen passing information to a known Soviet spy.  As proof, they offer a photo which seems to show Sam handing an envelope to the man.  The recently married Sam is now working as a secretary for a nuclear scientist and his wife, Professor and Mrs. Fraser.  A worker at the Soviet embassy has recently defected, and some papers he was able to smuggle out seem to indicate the existence of a previously unknown spy ring, known as the Eternity Ring.  The MI5 agents pressure Foyle into investigating both Sam and the Eternity Ring in an effort to keep their Soviet counterparts in check. 

Meanwhile, Sam's new husband Adam is in the running for a vacant seat as an MP for the Labour party.  In a parallel story, a former police offer who had worked with Foyle, Frank Shaw, also returns to England after being held prisoner by the Japanese during the war.  Frank, as was the case with most returning soldiers after the war, discovers that society has changed and he no longer knows where he fits in.  His family has learned to get along without him, his former house has been destroyed, and when he attempts to get a job again with the police force, he is told in no uncertain terms that the police force has no need for former army officers in its ranks.  Feeling frustrated, Frank lashes out at a totally innocent person.  Foyle, of course, in his calm and patient manner, is able to solve the mystery of the Eternity Ring, although in the process, he manages to get Sam fired from her job.  Luckily, when he's pressed to continue working for the Intelligence Service, he's able to demand that Sam also be hired as his driver again.

The second episode, The Cage, Foyle is called to investigate when a seriously injured man, apparently Russian, shows up at a hospital and dies soon afterwards.  The Russian's last words were "ten eye." The next morning, the doctor who treated him dies, too, apparently of a suicide.  Foyle's investigations take him to Barton Hall, a highly guarded estate in the country.  Foyle is given a restricted tour of the place, but feels there's something not right about what's going on there.  Meanwhile, election day is coming up and Sam's husband Adam is out knocking on doors.  He comes across a distraught woman, whose daughter Evelyn Greene has disappeared.  The police aren't doing anything to find her, so Sam asks Foyle to investigate this as well.  Officially, Foyle is now working to recruit new agents into MI5, so he identifies ones who are rejected, but just might be of use to him in some undercover operations.

The final episode, Sunflower, concerns the use of former Nazis by British Intelligence.  A "Professor Van Haaren" is actually a high-ranking Nazi officer named Karl Strasser.  He has been given a new identity as an art professor and put into a safe house by the Intelligence Service, which values his expertise on Soviet spy networks.  Recently, Strasser feels that someone is following him, and he's worried for his safety.  Foyle is assigned to investigate the threat.  During his investigations, he discovers that Strasser, much to his claims to the contrary, didn't actually spend his war years behind a desk, but was a participant in the killing of British and American prisoners known as the Sunflower Massacre.  The US Intelligence agents are anxious to have Strasser turned over to them in order to try him on war crimes charges, but the British don't want to lose such a valuable "asset."  Sam's husband Adam
is approached by a man who was forced to sell his farm to the government during the war.  He was told he could buy the land back at "current market value" after the war.  The land was recently re-appraised, and somehow managed to double in value during the war.  Adam investigates what's going on, and Sam helps out by using all the tools at her hands as an insider at the intelligence service.  Both Adam, as an MP, and Foyle, working for the Intelligence Service, are confronted by a variety of lies, crimes and even murders committed by agents of the government all in the name of the "greater good."  Lots of disillusioned idealists by the end of this episode! I was surprised to see a nearly unrecognizable Tamzin Outhwaite as the landlady, Mrs. Stevens!

There are many interesting extras included with this set.  The first disc contains a handy short re-cap

of what occurred over the course of the first 6 seasons of the series.  Each disc also contains an introduction by the series creator and writer Anthony Horowitz.  It's very interesting to hear how he was able to incorporate the issues facing people in Britain after the war (food rationing, housing shortages, problems soldiers encountered on returning home, etc.) into the series.  The final disc also contains 4 behind-the-scenes features, covering everything from the origins of the series to the style of the characters to a background on the Sunflower Massacre.  There is also a photo gallery from the series.

Disclaimer:  I received a copy of Foyle's War: Series 7 from Acorn Media in exchange for this review

Final Verdict for Foyle's War: Series 7:   Four Gherkins, for being the welcome return of a beloved investigator

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