Fifty Ships

Graduating to 5-star class
I'd previously rated Series 1 of FOYLE'S WAR at four stars. I'm happy to report, after finishing the Series 2 discs, that the ongoing British telly miniseries has graduated to five stars. It's superb, and I'm desolate that I must wait until 2005 for the release of Series 3 that's airing now in the UK. (Of course, if I move to England ... Nah, the wife would never go for it.)

Michael Kitchen is Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, who's been ordered to remain at his post as homicide investigator for Hastings and its environs; he'd much rather be doing his bit for King and Empire fighting the Nazis across the Channel. Indeed, his son Andrew (Julian Ovenden) is a flying officer with the RAF. The two other series regulars are Samantha "Sam" Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), the army's Auxiliary Territorial Service enlistee assigned as his driver, and Paul Milner (Anthony Howell), Foyle's assistant inspector returned to home front duty after being wounded during the...

Foyle just gets better
I awaited Series 2 on pins and needles, and putting it mildly I was not disappointed. What began as a well-conceived, complex war/mystery/drama series has evolved into a masterpiece. You could search the entire history of the Academy Awards and never find more gripping performances or solid screenwriting. And with Masterpiece Theater (Series 1) and now Mystery!, DCS Foyle is poised to become almost as popular in the US as he is in his native Britain.

Each episode is brilliantly written, with many plots and sub-plots that end up tying together as expertly as a Celtic Maze. Although in three cases out of four the identity of the murderer is not difficult to guess (and one is blatantly obvious), the fun, as always, is trying to unravel why.

On top of top-notch mystery plots, you have the moral complexity of a world at war, when right and wrong are not so easily catagorized into neat little boxes. DCS Foyle, with all his moral uprightness, finds himself in each...

Absolutely fabulous......
Contraband smuggling, rationing gas and food, theft of rations in short supply, hiding out in a country club settings to avoid the brunt of the air raids in London, sabotage, spying, revenge, desertion from the front, murder, suicide, a son in `harms way', Detective Superintendent Foyle faces it all in this second set of four stories from the FOYLE'S WAR series starring Michael Kitchen. The first set of stories was so fabulous I bought the second set sight unseen before Masterpiece Theater presented them on it's regular Sunday night program and I'd do it again. My hope is that there will be third and fourth sets in the series, which seems feasible as the war year is 1940 in film #4, and because, excepting the PRIME SUSPECT series with Jane Tennyson, these are the best mysteries to come along in a while. If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had been marketing works like these from the gitgo, perhaps we would have a regular Mystery Theater series instead of the hit or miss...

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