Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Ken Bones, Stephen Boxer, Kate Duchene, Patrick Joseph Byrnes, Dylan Charles, Joe Duttine, Ellie Hadding, Nicholas Jones, Daniel Weyman, Jennifer Hennessy, Sam Clemmett, Gyuri Sarossy, Steve Wilson, Christopher Fulford, Nathan Gordon.
The Second World War maybe over, the Shadow of the Cold War to come may high in the minds of the officials at MI5 but for Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle the war never really ends. The war on crime isn’t allowed to finish for the honest and fiercely loyal former Hasting’s policeman, no matter how much he would like to or how much some television executives have tried to retire the programme.
For Michael Kitchen to continue playing the detective as Foyle’s War lurches into the brave new world of enemies shifting positions and becoming friends with others is a testament to the writing of Anthony Horowitz and the way his character is perceived. Like Morse before him, no-one could play the same man at the age he is being portrayed, Michael Kitchen is just right for the part and with the hint of grim fascination he takes in solving a case, it is a much welcome return to Sunday nights for the man who solved crimes with a gentle ease and dour wit. This is a different world though since Christopher Foyle last stood on English soil. Full of prefabricated buildings; bomb damaged houses becoming playgrounds for the young and a new sense of purpose that the war which was won against the tyranny of Fascism was no in danger of being lost to apathy, ignorance and a new spectre to haunt the thoughts of those in charge of keeping Britain safe. Such is the premise to the new series opener, The Eternity Ring.
Teasingly the episode started in the American desert as a nuclear test is undertaken. The sense of history has always been pivotal to the series continued success but this could be seen as a turning point for the world and for the series, it reinforced the notion that the world had moved on and was a middle-aged man who had spent the war on the mean streets of a town that hugs the Sussex Coast be up for the challenge of solving new crimes.
Whilst the world had moved on for Foyle, it has also moved on for his driver and friend Sam Stewart, now a married woman and also facing her brand new world of having to feel to justify her life as a woman was moving but also important to show what important steps women had gained in equality after the devastating period. To have Honeysuckle Weeks reprising her role as Sam Stewart is just as much a boon to the show as having Michael Kitchen continue playing the detective, even if their characters are both out of their depth in a Britain still climbing off its knees after six years of war.
By playing Christopher Foyle, it remains Michael Kitchen’s most perfect role and a joy to have him back.
Ian D. Hall