Could this go into the "Streaming Netflix" thread? Yes, yes it could. Am I 8 years behind the curve? Yes, yes I am. Nevertheless, I just discovered this series recently, so it gets a new thread. Hoo-ray! So anyways, I've been watching this series, and it's absolutely fantastic. (As previously hinted, it's available for streaming on Netflix) The acting is top notch, the writing is even better, and on top of all that it's a period drama set during a section of history I find endlessly fascinating: WWII-era Britain. Is anybody else watching this? Or.... was anybody watching this back when it was new-ish?
Yeah, Foyle's War is great! @Marged's parents have the the first few seasons on DVD, so we watched those a few years ago and we've watched a few later episodes more recently on Netflix. Really good stuff.
Really great show. I need to go back and watch the first few seasons as I came into it midway through, but it's a good show.
Oh my. I just got to a part in the second episode where an old fisherman is talking about the evacuation at Dunkirk, and I got all teary eyed. They're not even "my boys", and it was just an evacuation,* and yet I'm deeply moved by the scene. The music is fairly muted, and the performances aren't over the top. Which is probably why the scene is so powerful. This series rocks. *Yes, I know the evacuation at Dunkirk was very important, but I also agree with Churchill where he said that no war was ever won with an evacuation. (Sorry, I can't find the exact quote at the moment.)
I love coming up with lewd alternative names for Honeysuckle Weeks. I was so happy to discover they made like, four more seasons after I stopped paying attention. I haven't even finished them yet. I love the acting in this series, Foyle is so noble and quiet without being unbearable or obnoxious.
I have this sitting in my queue, but hadn't gotten around to trying it yet; it was hovering in that nebulous area between "sounds cool" and "could be sort of dull." Guess I should watch it after all!
I watched the first season or two pretty religiously but kind of tuned out over time because 1944 or whatever it was is inherently less interesting than "solving mysteries in crazy doomed 1940 Britain."
Pretty true. We watched the one that features VE Day this morning, and that was actually more interesting than a lot of the later wartime ones. Marged has seen some of the postwar episodes but I haven't yet.
One more post about the awesomeness of this series, and then I'll stop treating BF like my personal blog, I promise: The reveal for what they make in the Factory in Episode 3 is fantastic. It came as a complete surprise, and yet it made perfect sense, both within the context of the story and also within the context of the war. It's been a long time since a movie or TV series was able to surprise me w/out having me feel they either cheated or were completely arbitrary.
It's truly awesome, the best performance by Michael Kitchen I've seen. A friend of mine has a huge crush on Honeysuckle Weeks that we don't tell his wife about.
By the way, anybody who enjoys Foyle's War might also enjoy Flame and Citron. It's a movie about the Danish resistance during WWII. It's much more morally ambiguous, and it's done in quite a different style, and yet it still feels similar to Foyle's War somehow... and not just because of the historical period. Much like Foyle's War, Flame and Citron also has top notch acting & writing. However, it is done by a Danish group, so it's all in Danish & subtitled. So.... if reading while watching a movie bugs you, it might not be your thing. Edit- I was giving it some thought as to why Foyle's War reminds me of Flame and Citron, and I think it's the moral ambiguity, actually. In the end, all the stories in Foyle's War end up with pretty clear "good guys" and "bad guys", and yet... the series is wonderfully full of the contradictions to any society during wartime. Consider the pacifist that joins up in Episode 2: is he a moral failure for giving up his pacifism or a hero for realizing his human weakness & making use of it? Both, really. There's a bunch of other contradictions that I've already seen which I don't want to go into because of spoilers, but you get the idea. Anyways, Flame and Citron is a lot like that, except even murkier.
After watching several more episodes, I noticed another awesome detail.* Despite having an attractive actress & a distinguished & handsome actor working in close quarters, the show doesn't depict any sexual tension between them. That's likely how it would happen in real life, given the characters' ages, backgrounds, and positions, but it's a depressing fact that most shows would have tried to spice things up with romance. *Yes, I can be slow sometimes.
I kind of agree with you, but I've gotten to the post-war season, and I'm finding it just as fascinating as the first couple seasons. Seeing how a country demobilizes & how former military personnel try to adjust to normal life again is surprisingly interesting. It gives me a new appreciation for the true cost of wars.
