Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Ellie Haddington, Rupert Vansittart, Tim McMullan, Daniel Weyman, Leo Gregory, Jesse Fox, Colin Connor, Simon Hepworth, Conleth Hill, David Ericsson, Julian Lewis Jones, Ronnie Fox, Henry Garrett.

All good things come to an end, some with a blast and some with an understated whimper. For Foyle’s War to contain both is quite possibly the single most maddening reason for this very successful police drama to finally come to its closure.

The news that there will be no new Foyle’s War on television will be arguably seen as yet another dismissal of good serious crime drama on I.T.V. and perhaps more reliance on American television to come or worse, more delving into the type of television that saturates and seeps through like a cold January shower, leaving you deflated and mind empty.

With the final episode of Foyle’s War, Elise, taking on the subject of the sins of the service and the often swept under the carpet attitude of lost agents only being mourned in private during a war, the episode, whilst having Michael Kitchen’s indelible stamp all over it, seemed to encompass the latter-day he had been surrounded by coming very much to the fore.

Hilda Pierce is the subject of an assassination attempt and whilst it deflects from the main case in hand, that of organised crime getting a foot hold in London after World War Two and the corruption of senior officials, it is none the less a chance for the seemingly undervalued Ellie Haddington to shine throughout an episode, in the same way that stalwart of Anthony Horowitz’s television adaptations, Samantha Wainwright/Stewart, played with such supreme confidence in all the episodes by the redoubtable Honeysuckle Weeks, has been able to since casting off the net of the young naive woman who first met Christopher Foyle when seconded to be his driver.

The look into the Black Market operating in post-war Britain is one that doesn’t normally get much attention on television. Unless seen through the eyes of classic British comedy Dad’s Army in which the local spiv is regarded more of a hero than a menace, the lead through into organised crime after the war is as hushed up as Government mistakes in which could discredit a former Prime Minister. Where Anthony Horowitz’s writing excels is his ability to pull back the curtain on the past for the viewer and show them that nothing has changed. The measure of austerity inflicted upon the country after the war was to further increase the air of gloom and despondency that the nation felt. With tight rationing at the very core of British life, it’s with little wonder that people looked to those men and women who could supply anything for a price as heroes fighting for them against an unjust system.

The explosive ending that perhaps demanded the bowing out of a very popular programme came at the cost of two people’s conscious and was wonderfully executed, the soft lingering look at Michael Kitchen’s character as he walked away from the funeral of his esteemed colleague was perhaps not quite the ending, if it had to come at all, that viewers would have asked for in the life of Christopher Foyle.

Nevertheless, an excellent television detective has reached his end, not with the final curtain drawn over him like Morse, nor with intrigue at the passing of Poirot, but with the fondest of farewells.

Ian D. Hall