Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

Foyle's War: Set 8 Blu-ray Movie Review

The Conscience of MI5

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 4, 2015

Judging from the interviews included with the three episodes comprising Set 8 of Foyle's War, creator and writer Anthony Horowitz did not originally intend for these entries to serve as the series conclusion. But in January 2015, just after the second of the three episodes had aired, co-producer ITV announced that it would order no more episodes, and Horowitz agreed that it was time to call it a day. Both he and series producer Jill Green pronounced themselves satisfied that the series had concluded on a "high", and Horowitz questioned whether he had any more stories to tell.

Watching these three superbly executed entries in the Foyle canon, one can understand the writer's dilemma. Having repeatedly prevented Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen) from enjoying his well-earned retirement, Horowitz was running out of excuses. At the conclusion of Set 7, it was unclear whether Foyle would remain with the security service at MI5, a position he had initially accepted only out of concern for his friend and former driver, Samantha "Sam" Wainwright (Honeysuckle Weeks). Set 8 finds Foyle still occupying his London desk but with an air of resigned weariness. Foyle may have wanted to work for MI5 during the war (his application was rejected), but with the Nazis defeated, he keeps asking himself why a former policeman continues to loiter in the infinite shades of gray where the intelligence community operates.

In these final episodes, Foyle's function has subtly shifted from what it used to be. Although he remains a tenacious investigator, solving crimes and apprehending the guilty are no longer Foyle's primary function. Instead, he has become the representative of morality whose very presence serves as a reminder that there is such a thing as right and wrong—an essential value that a great many ordinary Britons gave their lives in a war to preserve and that too often gets swept aside in intelligence work by justifications invoking "the greater good".

(Warning: The discussion below assumes that the reader is familiar with previous series of Foyle's War and contains spoilers for those who are not. Proceed at your own risk.)

High Castle (disc 1) (first broadcast: Jan. 4, 2015, U.K.; Feb. 2, 2015, U.S., Acorn TV)

Both "High Castle" and "Trespass" depart from the usual formula of Foyle's War episodes by opening immediately with the title sequence. But "High Castle" follows the titles with a prologue set during the war, when two young men, John and Albert Morton (Charlie Archer and Rupert Simonian), are caught sneaking onto a departing ship carrying a supply of whisky from which they try to siphon a jug or two. John becomes violently ill.

In 1946, the body of a university professor, John Knowles, is found in a London park. The murder attracts MI5's attention because Prof. Knowles has in his pocket the London address of Clayton Del Mar (Nigel Lindsay, whose American accent needs some work), chief executive of Global American Oil, a U.S. company of vital strategic importance both during and after the war. Del Mar lives in a London mansion with his wife, Edith (Madeleine Potter), and his ailing father, Andrew (special guest star John Mahoney), who founded the company.

With Global American currently negotiating agreements with Iran that are crucial to keeping its petroleum resources out of Soviet hands, the head of MI5, Sir Alec Myerson (Rupert Vansittart), will take no risks where the Del Mar family is concerned. Since investigating a murder seems like a perfect job for a former policeman, Foyle is dispatched. Clayton Del Mar denies ever having met Prof. Knowles, but Foyle senses that the family is hiding something. Still unaware that his loyal assistant, Sam, is pregnant (a development that occurred at the end of the prior series), Foyle allows her to volunteer for undercover work as a "companion" to the senior Del Mar, who employs someone to read aloud to him. Monitored at a distance by Foyle's MI5 colleague, Arthur Valentine (Tim McMullan), Sam investigates the Del Mars from within, at great risk to her own safety. She ultimately discovers that the family has a remarkable past.

Meanwhile, Foyle travels to Germany, after learning that Prof. Knowles was a translator at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. His inquiries bring him into the darkest heart of the German war machine, as the trail leads to the Monowitz concentration camp in Poland, where the inmates were used as slave labor for the German manufacturer IG Farben. A long chain of corporate relations, war profiteering and blackmail eventually yields the solution to the murder, but justice arrives by an unusual means.

In a subplot, Sam's husband, M.P. Adam Wainwright (Daniel Weyman), is confronted with the challenge of women in the workplace. A constituent, Vera Stephens (Jaime Winstone), seeks Adam's help in retaining the position as supervisor in a radio factory to which she was promoted during the war. The boss has returned the position to the man who had it before he left to fight in Europe. Adam finds the competing equities difficult to reconcile, and his judgment is clouded by his desire to have his own wife quit her job immediately and devote all her time to preparing for motherhood. Sam, who isn't yet ready to give up the career to which she's devoted so many years (not to mention the boss to whom she is deeply loyal), has a few choice words for her husband.


Trespass (disc 1) (first broadcast: Jan. 11, 2015, U.K., Feb. 9, 2015, U.S., Acorn TV)

In 1946, the British still ruled the area then known as Palestine under a "mandate" established after World War I. The British Mandate was subject to constant attack by groups representing both Jewish and Arab interests. The single most deadly incident was the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, by the Irgun, a Zionist organization. "Trespass" opens with a group of British soldiers hunting for suspects in the King David Hotel bombing. They burst into the Jerusalem home of Lea Fisher (Amber Rose Revah) and drag away her father, a rabbi. As it turns out, they have the wrong address, and the arrest is a mistake.

Four months later, a Jewish university student in London, Daniel Woolf (Alexander Arnold), is badly beaten after leaving class. His teacher, Elizabeth Addis (Hermione Gulliford), was a colleague of the late Prof. Knowles, the murder victim in "High Castle", and met Foyle during the investigation. She asks him to look into the matter. Foyle is immediately struck by the fact that neither Daniel nor his family has reported the incident to the police, even though Daniel's father, Sir David Woolf (Jonathan Tafler), is a wealthy and respected shipping magnate. It's as if the family knows who the attackers are but does not wish to take action against them.

At the same time, another Jewish-related family conflict is playing itself out. Charles Lucas (Richard Lintern), who is loosely based on the historical figure Sir Oswald Mosley, has been released from the wartime imprisonment to which his National Socialist sympathies condemned him. Having reinvented himself as the head of the "International Unity Party", Lucas intends to retake his place on the political stage, but he has promised his son, Robert (Nick Hendrix), that he will no longer espouse anti-Semitism. The promise is an empty one, as Lucas quickly demonstrates at a rally held in Adam Wainwright's constituency that escalates into a riot. The police, having promised Adam they would maintain order, sympathize with the rioters.



Against this backdrop of conflict, London is scheduled to host the latest in a series of diplomatic conferences on the future of Palestine. Concerned over security, a minister from the Foreign Office, Alex Jennings (Clive Ord-Smith), directs MI5 to provide additional protection for the conference. Unnoticed by any of the authorities, Lea Fisher has recently arrived in London from Jerusalem. She is staying with the family of her uncle and claims to be attending medical school, but is that her real purpose?

The clash of agendas, both hidden and overt, leads to tragic consequences. The most shocking revelation, though, is the extent to which some of the worst actions result from purely pragmatic calculation and don't even have the justification of a passion for family and homeland.

A secondary storyline concerns Sam's efforts to help a father who cannot afford to treat his son's whooping cough. The National Health Service was in its early planning stages but would not be available for several years.


Elise (disc 2) (first broadcast: Jan. 18, 2015, U.K., Feb. 16, 2015, U.S., Acorn TV)

It was the devious and inscrutable Hilda Pierce (Ellie Haddington) who first recruited Foyle into MI5, and she has alternately been both his defender and his adversary (and sometimes both at the same time). During the course of these three episodes, the audience learns that Miss Pierce has been secretly keeping tabs on Foyle, whose stubbornly independent streak she knows only too well. And Foyle, of course, knows better than to trust Miss Pierce.

Fittingly, then, the final episode of Foyle's War centers on Miss Pierce and her wartime history with the Special Operations Executive or "SOE", before she became the number two figure in MI5. In the episode teaser, a mysterious man, who will later be identified as Miles Corrigan (Jesse Fox), guns down the elderly lady on the building steps outside MI5 headquarters. Before shooting, he calls her by name and says, "This is for Elise." While Miss Pierce lies unconscious in hospital, her MI5 colleagues swing into action, spurred on by her former SOE comrade-in-arms, Sir Ian Woodhead (Conleth Hill), who is now head of MI6, the foreign intelligence service.

"Elise" was the code name of a young British woman, Sophie Corrigan (Katherine Press), recruited by Miss Pierce for undercover duty in France. After extensive training, Elise was air-dropped by night and attempted to meet her contact, but was immediately captured by the Gestapo, tortured and executed. Elise's mother, Joyce Corrigan (Emma Fielding), still mourns her, and her brother, Miles, has never forgotten the last sight of his sister driving away with Miss Pierce in a government vehicle. Miles still lives with his mother but has not been seen since the shooting of Miss Pierce.

When Miss Pierce regains consciousness, she relates to Foyle that Elise was one of nine undercover agents that the Gestapo seized immediately upon their arrival in Europe, and that she and Sir Ian concluded there must be a double agent in SOE, whom they dubbed "Plato". They narrowed the list down to three people, but could never find any proof. Foyle resolves to identify Plato, even though several years have passed. No doubt one of his reasons is his instinctive dislike of open cases, but another is his discovery of something he has never before seen: a deep reserve of emotion in the heretofore stony reserve with which Hilda Pierce has always managed her professional affairs. The girls she recruited obviously meant a great deal to her. Their loss weighs heavily. Like the family of a murder victim, she needs the closure of having their killer brought to justice.

An apparently unrelated investigation yields clues. MI5 has been looking into the activities of Damian White (Leo Gregory), a new breed of criminal who styles himself as a patriotic rebuilder of the British economy in an era of continued scarcity. From his headquarters in a swanky private club, White deals in stolen goods, bribes policemen to look the other way, and may have graduated to trafficking in government secrets. White's activities even ensnare Adam Wainwright, when the idealistic M.P. registers a complaint with the local constabulary about the trade in stolen merchandise being conducted openly in his constituency. As if by magic, the police find such merchandise in the Wainwright home, creating public embarrassment for the naive politician.

By the time Foyle has helped unravel the identity of Plato, White's budding empire has crumbled and illusions have been shattered—not so much for Foyle, who has no illusions left, but for others, including some who thought they'd lost them all. The only surprise that remains for Foyle is when Sam Wainwright finally works up the nerve to inform her boss that this will be her last case, because she is pregnant. She has a final request, which he is happy to grant.

Foyle's War: Set 8 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The final three episodes of Foyle's War were shot with the Arri Alexa by cinematographer Tony Coldwell, whose extensive credits include Garrow's Law and Mr. Selfridge. Despite the change in DP, the photographic style remains consistent, featuring a similarly desaturated palette as Britain continues to struggle with shortages and desolation following the destruction of its cities and economy after many years of Nazi assault. The drabness of the present-day palette serves as a useful contrast in distinguishing other places and times, e.g. the sunny prologue in Jerusalem that opens "Trespass" (see screenshot 15) and the memories by Elise's mother of her daughter before she was deployed to France in "Elise" (see screenshot 29). Still, the rigors of post-war England are nothing compared to Foyle's visit to the concentration camp at Monowitz, where color is virtually absent and only cold grays, whites and blues remain (see screenshot 1). England, at least, still has warm earth tones.

As with Set 7, detail is exceptional throughout, blacks are solid and contrast is excellent. Noise or interference is entirely absent. This time around, Acorn Media has placed the first two episodes on one 1080p, AVC-encoded BD-50, and the third episode on a second BD-50, along with the major extras. The result is a higher average bitrate of just under 20 Mbps for "High Castle" and "Trespass" and just under 24 Mbps for "Elise". These are good rates for digitally acquired source material of this nature.

Foyle's War: Set 8 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like the episodes of Set 7, these last three arrive with 5.1 soundtracks encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. Though Foyle's War remains a dialogue-driven series, the wide variety of environments into which intelligence work brings the former policeman provides new opportunities for interesting sound cues. The attempted shipboard theft that opens "High Castle" is accompanied by the echoes and creaks that are typical below deck; a potentially violent encounter later in the episode sounds appropriately chaotic (I cannot be more specific without spoilers); and Foyle's visit to the prison facility at Nuremburg and then to Monowitz has several eerie moments. The rally and ensuing riot in "Trespass" are loud and intimidating, as is an elaborate scene involving the Palestine diplomatic conference (again, details cannot be provided without spoilers). Finally, the wartime flashbacks in "Elise" involve several scenes of air travel in period planes, which are effectively rendered, as are several incidents of violence, including the attempted assassination that opens the episode.

The scores for these three episodes were written by Colin Towns (Doc Martin ). The sturdy series theme by Jim Parker (Midsomer Murders ) continues to open and close each episode.

Foyle's War: Set 8 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Truth Behind the Fiction (1080p; 1.78:1): Each episode is accompanied by a featurette in which creator/writer Anthony Horowitz and historical advisor Terry Charman of the Imperial War Museum discuss the events that inspired the story.
• High Castle (disc 1) (13:39)
• Trespass (disc 1) (16:30)
• Elise (disc 2) (22:02)



• A Day in the Life of Foyle's War (1080p; 1.78:1; 26:30): Featuring extensive interviews with cast and crew, the bulk of this featurette focuses on a day of filming the episode entitled "Trespass", specifically a scene set in the office of MI5's chief, Sir Alec Myerson. A short section at the end records a visit by Anthony Horowitz to the set during the filming of "High Castle". One of the major topics is the decision to shoot this series of Foyle's War in Liverpool, because so much of its historic architecture has been preserved, whereas contemporary London is so modern that period dramas can no longer be filmed there. (The previous series of Foyle's War was shot in Dublin, another favored location for recreating period London.)



• Interview with John Mahoney (1080p; 1.78:1; 20:35): In this wide-ranging interview, Mahoney talks about his character in "High Castle" and answers questions about his long career, including his eleven seasons on Frasier. A Chicago resident and a member of its famous Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Mahoney is usually considered a quintessentially American actor, but in fact he is a native of the U.K. who spent his first nineteen years in Manchester. He explains in the interview how he came to reside in the U.S., became a citizen and embarked on an acting career.



• Back in Time with Foyle's War (1080p; 1.78:1; 27:28): This featurette was shot at RAF Woodvale, an airfield built during World War II, initially for the defense of Liverpool, where major scenes of "Elise" were shot. Key personnel involved in supplying and operating the rare vintage aircraft featured in the episode are interviewed, as well as suppliers of the period automobiles used in Foyle's War and other shows set in the same era, including Downton Abbey . Director Andy Hay discusses "Elise", as do key members of the cast, including French actor Serge Hazanavicius (brother of The Artist director, Michel Hazanavicius), who offers an interesting perspective on acting in a language with which one is not fully familiar.



• Photo Gallery (1080p; various; 1:18): A slide show that includes both publicity stills and production photos.



• Trailers: At startup, disc 1 plays trailers for Acorn Media, The Great Train Robbery and Jack Taylor, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Foyle's War: Set 8 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Set 7 of Foyle's War ended with a question mark; if ITV had pulled the plug at that point, the series would have felt unresolved. But this latest set ends very differently. At the conclusion of "Elise", Sam stands at the beginning of a new chapter in her life, as she resolves to quit work and begin a family. As for the redoubtable Foyle, his future is left to the viewer's imagination, but I think it likely that his long-postponed retirement is finally near at hand. Many elements in "Elise" suggest that Foyle has had his fill of MI5, especially now that he is losing the support of the assistant on whom he's come to rely. Foyle has more than earned his rest. Being an honest man in a profession where deceit is the norm would exhaust anyone. As its creator wished, Foyle's War exits on a high note, and the Blu-ray set is excellent. Highly recommended.