Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Ellie Haddington, Rupert Vansittart, Richard Lintern, Tim McMullan, Alex Jennings, Matilda Zieglar, Alexander Arnold, Michael Begley, Jonny Bingham, Jim Cartwright, Gerry Aziz, Oliver Churm, Hermione Gulliford, John Heffernan, Finbar Lynch, Colin Mace, Ania Marson, Poppy Miller, Josh Moran, Marianne Oldham, William Postlethwaite, Amber Rose Revah, Bianca Rudman, Michael Schaeffer, Michael Ryan, Jeremy Swift, Jonathan Tafler, Sophie Skelton, Jeremy Swift, Yolanda Vazquez, Scott Vickers, Daniel Weyman.
No matter how much time elapses between the end of World War Two and the times we live, something happens in the world that underlines the very simple fact that nothing, nothing at all ever changes. There will always be people, on either end of the political spectrum, of any type of belief, who will never ever accept people for who they are. They will always believe them to be an underclass.
Watching Foyle’s War at times is like holding a mirror up to the events that we shroud ourselves around in the present day. The British public might not be in a war on the scale that was felt during the dark days of the 1940s, or the cold war that was keenly felt once the war in Europe was won but none the less, with a general election only a few months away, the playground bullies with unpalatable thoughts are beginning to believe that they can drive British public opinion into the realms of decay.
With Foyle looking into activities of a Jewish shipping magnet whose son was beaten up on the stairs of his college and his MI5 bosses charged with the security of an important conference dealing with the after effects of the bombing of the King David Hotel, the two cases become blurred and mixed as terrorism comes to the streets of London in the episode Trespass.
To add petrol to the already flammable mixture, the spectre of a Mosley fanatic released from his time interment, rears his ugly head and stokes the flames of the East End poor, disenfranchised, unemployed and scared by what they see as lack of progress after the Labour General Election result in 1945. To this they turn their minds to blaming others and the danger they cause.
The years may go past, times may appear to change but we repeat everything that the past told us not to and the wheel always brings round the challenge of whether or not we will face it with pride for who we are or cower in shame and allow the unpalatable more and more room.
If there is one thing that I.T.V does very well, it is in its detective drama; Foyle’s War is amongst the finest that the channel has to offer.
Ian D. Hall