‘Foyle’s War’ returns with three new films slated for 2013
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‘Foyle’s War,’ the World War II-set British detective series last seen here in 2010 under the banner of PBS’ ‘Masterpiece Mystery,’ will return for an eighth season in 2013, with three new feature-length episodes. Creator Anthony Horowitz, producer Jill Green and star Michael Kitchen, as Det. Chief Supt. Christopher Foyle, are all back on board, with costar Honeysuckle Weeks, as Foyle’s former driver, Samantha Stewart, ‘expected to return.’ I suppose that means she might not, but she ought to; this has been a marvelous show, rich in character, local color and period detail. (Kitchen’s official statement of enthusiasm: “It’s great to be wanted and a pleasure to be back.”)
With its first six seasons set during World War II mostly in and around the English seaside town of Hastings, ‘Foyle’s War’ mixes the usual stuff of detective shows (i.e., murder) with what might be called historical topicality. The last season -- which saw the show brought back to life after a much-protested 2007 cancellation and a later change in management at ITV, the producing network -- took place in the months after VE Day; the new films, set in 1946-47, will take Foyle, now a ‘senior intelligence officer,’ into the early days of the Cold War. We are promised tales of atomic spies and government corruption, ‘firmly based on true stories.’
As he did in season seven, Horowitz -- who also created the temperamentally similar ‘Midsomer Murders,’ writes novels (for kids and for adults) and is slated to script the next big-screen ‘Tintin’ adaptation -- will pen the opening and closing episodes, with David Kane writing the second. In reviewing that last season, I wrote of its hero, ‘Though he is small and quiet for a TV cop, he possesses a fearsome decency, not to be swayed by rank or authority, that borders on the superheroic. He’s clear-sighted and dogged, courteous where it’s merited and cutting where it’s not, and it is pure joy to watch him go.’
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-- Robert Lloyd
