Attention fans of the acclaimed WW2 and Cold War mystery, “Foyle’s War”: The last three episodes will be available on Acorn TV starting Feb. 2, 2015.
The “Foyle’s War” series started during World War II but is now post-war. It stars Michael Kitchen as Senior Intelligence Officer Foyle, a retired policeman who now works for MI-5, the counterintelligence service. Samantha Wainwright (Honeysuckle Weeks) who was his driver during the war is now his assistant.
Weeks thinks it’s more interesting post-war than during the war. “It’s always as though history forgot about (this period),” she said. “To the general consensus, the war was the most interesting thing and that what came after it was not really.”
The three final episodes are set in 1946, the beginning of a time that remade the world. Nazis are being tried in Nuremburg for war crimes. The concept of the state of Israel in the Middle East is being debated in London. America has risen to become a major power in the world as the U.K. fades in influence.
Allies during the war, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom are at odds in a “Cold War”, a phrase coined by writer George Orwell (better known for “1984”).
“The Cold War wasn’t really a war,” said Weeks drawing a distinction between actual combat and shadow espionage. “And, not only wasn’t it a war, but, to the people in the Secret Service what were doing, how they were managing extremely tricky situations with the Russians who happened to be our allies” was extremely dangerous.
One of the finest parts of “Foyle’s War” is the absolute commitment of the show of getting the historical details correct. These episodes show it like it was during the drab post-war period in England. It was a time of rationing and shortages, of black market smuggling, the stark, grim aftermath of those years.
For example, troops returned to take up the jobs they had before the war, but women had filled in all those years. They were told to back to their kitchens and children. Some rebelled, setting up the question: how can you not give a job to a returning veteran? Who loses?
The show also shows the time with all its warts – anti-Semitism, the class structure in England, and discrimination of all sorts.
The first episode deals with international business, American arrogance, the Nuremburg trials, German death camps and gasoline smuggling during the war.
Another episode deal with Jews, Palestine and anti-Semitism, both of which are in the news now.
Weeks says of writer Anthony Horowitz, “he just does have a knack of making things relevant, I think… He manages to catch the zeitgeist of the moment.” Horowitz is currently working on a new James Bond novel.
The final episode goes back to the war and the terrible cost it took on the people who ran the secret operations, and the agents who often died at the hands of the Germans.
After the last three episodes are broadcast, all eight seasons of “Foyle’s War” will be available on www.Acorn.TV via the iTunes App store and on Roku streaming player, for binge watching.
Weeks said, “You want to leave on a high. In any case, you want to leave so that people want more rather than finding that it has lost its sparkle.”