Foyle's War: Set 5
 | Starring: Michael Kitchen, Anthony Howell, Honeysuckle Weeks Acorn Media, 2007, DVD Customer Rating: 48 reviews Recommend |
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Combining uncompromising historical accuracy with compelling mysteries, this acclaimed PBS series continues with three feature-length episodes. Michael Kitchen (Out of Africa) stars as DCS Christopher Foyle, investigating wartime crimes in an English coastal town. With the end of World War II slowly but inevitably approaching, Foyle and his fellow citizens learn the price of victory and face a peace that will transform their lives in unexpected ways.
Also starring Anthony Howell and Honeysuckle Weeks, and featuring Nicholas Day, Malcolm Sinclair, Nicholas Woodeson, Duncan Bell, Julian Ovenden, Mark Bazeley, Julian Wadham, and Phyllida Law.
THE MYSTERIES:
DVD SEPCIAL FEATURES INCLUDE making-of documentary, cast member reflections, notes on a real-life Foyle, and cast filmographies.
No one was unhappy when World War II ended, but the demise of Foyle’s War is something else entirely. For fans of this first-rate British murder mystery series, set against the backdrop of that epic conflict, Set 5 represents something of a reprieve; although Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen) retired at the end of Set 4, circumstances force him to return to action in "Plan of Attack," the first of three 90-minute episodes (each on its own disc) offered here. But by the end of this set, the war is over and Foyle has eased back into retirement. That’s lamentable. Smartly conceived and often quite masterfully executed, this show will certainly be missed. "History meets mystery" has been the concept from the beginning, as the low-key (like Peter Falk’s Columbo, he knows much more than he lets on), unfailingly decent Foyle and his assistants, Sgt. Paul Milner (Anthony Howell) and driver Samantha "Sam" Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), solve murders and various other crimes in and around bucolic Hastings, England, while WWII rages on at home and abroad. But this time out, the war provides much more than context, as the murders tend to be directly related to it. What’s more, Set 5 affectingly deals with combat’s heavy emotional psychological toll. It’s a burden we see carried by the cartographer who can’t bear knowing that his work is helping to kill innocent German civilians (in "Plan of Attack"); by the maimed former POW struggling to readjust to life at home, the teenager whose job it is to deliver bad news telegrams to soldiers’ families, and the Jewish doctor, a refugee from Poland, whose survivor’s guilt leads him down a very dark path (all three in "Broken Souls"); and even by Foyle’s own son (Julian Ovenden, in "All Clear"). OK, so the mysteries may not be all that mysterious — perceptive viewers will have little difficulty identifying the culprits. But with its multi-layered storytelling (the scripts were written by creator Anthony Horowitz) and fine production values (the cinematography, editing, and music are all excellent), Foyle’s War is a whodunit that’s both a prime example of its genre and thoroughly successful on its own unique terms. Bonus features include a brief "making of" featurette and cast filmographies. — Sam Graham
Title: Foyle's War: Set 5
Sales Rank: 957 in DVD
Actor: Michael Kitchen, Anthony Howell, Honeysuckle Weeks
Studio: Acorn Media, 2008-08-05, Theatrical Release: 2007
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC, Acpect Ratio 1.66:1
Languages: English (Original Language)
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Running Time: 277 minutes
Package Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches, 0.55 pounds
- Too bad the war is over.
- This series like the others that preceded it paint a vivid picture of rural England during and just after the Second World War. Who could have ever believed that all these intrigues and treachery existed so far from London and the Front and how Foyle and his band of faithful cohorts solved them all. Too… More reviews
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