TV REVIEW: 'FOYLE'S WAR' DVD
Good Acting, Good Writing
(PBS) I love a good mystery…a good British mystery. Death and bodies yes, but in quiet quaint little villages and chummy local pubs. It used be Agatha Christie and her Poirot and Miss Marple. A good Murder on the Orient Express still holds up. But Miss Marple and her quiet knitting and Poirot’s “…shall we all meet in the drawing room and I will explain exactly how this murder happened?” are old hat. The new mysteries offer us another level. Along with the surprise of exactly what happened when and how and by whom comes a new social consciousness. Jane Tennyson of Prime Suspect brought the question of tough, macho cops failing to accept a woman bossing them around. We were involved not only in the mystery but how the pressure of solving crimes impacted Tennyson’s personal life. Perhaps it’s fair to say that the new mysteries have become more “real.”
One of the absolute best of this genre is Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle of the little town of Hastings — his quiet manner, unflappable, sometimes pensive, never making a judgment before he is absolutely sure…but mostly his solid ethical standard in solving crimes against the background of WWII. End of last season, the war was over. It was time for Foyle to retire and sit on the quiet banks of a Hastings stream fishing for trout.
Happily, our DCS Foyle has returned! It is now post-war with unactivated bombs still going off and ration books with few rations, and Foyle is dragged back to service. You can rely on Foyle.
Three new episodes emerged from Masterpiece Mystery, and if you weren’t lucky enough to catch them, you can get them on DVD. And great episodes they are. “Killing Time” was especially pertinent to an American audience since it tackled head-on not their problem but ours: the segregation of American troops by color.
The black soldiers fought side by side with their white brothers on the beaches of Normandy. Now they are in a holding pattern in Hastings, waiting for transport home, and the same racist attitudes which still existed in the States descend on Hastings in the guise of southern soldiers who — if they got these guys home, black soldiers who dared to date and fall in love with the white girls of Hastings — would “string them up.” And the script pulls no punches.
At the time this episode was shown, an L.A. theater was playing The Ballad of Emmett Till, which reminded us of how close are our racist “murders” are to this our contemporary “emancipated age.” Foyle, in the episode “Killing Time,” encounters the town council who, at the request of the American military, want to establish a color bar — one for whites, one for blacks. It is expedient to keep the troops quiet.
Foyle, played by the inimitable Michael Kitchen (remember him as the poorly sighted suitor in Enchanted April?), says little, says it quietly, but shows us oh so much more. He sits around a table of Hastings council who all vote for color bar, and he quietly reminds them of how, in Britain, there is no color distinction, that these men gave their lives side by side… What he asks without raising his voice but the emotion seeps through: What have we been fighting for? And he welcomes the big handsome black musician soldier and his Hastings girlfriend, now mother of his child, who, although there is no distinction perhaps in London, is still cast out by her mother who wants her to give up the baby and the man she loves.
In earlier episodes, Foyle has a driver, the cool and collected Samantha (played by a fine actress with the improbable name of Honeysuckle Weeks). She’s now a civilian helping a handsome but shy young man who has inherited a guest house in a time of reconstruction when half the town is still trying to clear away rubble and there is scant food on the table. Now she and Foyle work together as friends.
How Foyle coolly handles the situation (almost more ours than theirs) is worth a see.
If you can, catch these first three episodes in rerun. They are Foyle‘s gems. If not, catch them on DVD.
Hoping for more Foyle. I am not knocking the perennial Miss Marple. Just that she now seems a bit old-fashioned.
Foyle’s War: good acting, good writing.
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