Series Six of the ITV programme Foyle's War was first aired in 2008, and comprised three episodes. It is set in the period from April 1944 to May 1945. Series Six was broadcast in the United States on PBS stations on Masterpiece Mystery! as Foyle's War V on July 13, 20 and 27, 2008. [1]
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| Writer: Anthony Horowitz | Director: Tristram Powell | Airdate: 6 January 2008 (UK) | Set: April 1944 | Episode 17 (6:1) |
| Guests: Fiona Glascott, Martin Hutson, Julian Wadham, Robert Whitelock, Nicholas Day, Elizabeth McKechnie, Malcolm Sinclair, Philip Fox, Vince Leigh, Clifford Rose, Michael Jayston | ||||
| Milner and DCS Meredith (Foyle's replacement) have arrested a racketeer, but this has to take a back-seat when a highly-strung map-maker is found hanged in local woods, after confiding in a local Catholic priest (a German, but apparently anti-Nazi). It looks like suicide but Milner is not so sure. Threatened by the racketeer, Milner is the subject of an attempted assassination, which instead leaves Meredith dead. Foyle is reluctantly called back from retirement to solve both the cases, which he successfully does, and decides to stay in police work until the end of the war. | ||||
At the start of the episode Foyle is in retirement after his resignation a year earlier at the end of Casualties of War, Sam has ceased to be a police driver on being sacked by Foyle's replacement Meredith and is now working as a librarian in the Air Ministry's cartography facility at Beverley Lodge, having been recommended for the job by her seniors at the Mechanised Transport Corps (where, as seen in "The Funk Hole", her lack of mechanical ability meant she never fitted in). She is also helping Foyle to write a book on the Hastings Constabulary by acting as his typist (though it is implied that Foyle is quite - and indeed, more - capable of typing the manuscript himself). Milner is finding Meredith difficult to work with and therefore considering leaving the police. However, by the end of the episode, the original team of three is reunited.
One major theme within the episode is efforts by the English church to preach forgiveness of the enemy, to establish relations with the German church (such as the German Confessing Church), to grant Germany a conditional rather than unconditional surrender to prevent the unnecessary killing of innocents by indiscriminate bombing of German cities, and to oppose that bombing in itself. The efforts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer towards such aims are mentioned, the fictional Francis Wood (holding the fictional bishopric of Cirencester) leads the movement (in place of the real-life George Bell, Bishop of Chichester), and the character of Samantha's vicar uncle Aubrey Stewart (Brian Poyser) recurs from the episode The French Drop. Another theme is the work of RAF mapmakers at Beverley Lodge to aid the bombing campaign.
The general setting is also significant, with mentions of increased troop movements down to the south coast and that "the end of the war is in sight". This indicates the April 1944 setting, two months before D Day.
| Writer: Michael Chaplin | Director: Simon Langton | Airdate: 13 April 2008 (UK) | Set: October 1944 | Episode 18 (6:2) |
| Guests: Nicholas Woodeson, Graham Crowden, Duncan Bell, Phyllida Law, Natasha Little, Joseph Mawle, Roger Sloman | ||||
| Foyle meets Josef Novak for a chess game. Novak is a Polish-Jewish psychiatrist at a nearby military mental-health institution where Dr Worth is found murdered. Foyle is called in, having to delegate the finding of a missing East End boy (formerly a child-evacuee in the Hastings area) to Sam. Under suspicion, and hearing radio news of the discovery of the concentration camp to which his wife and daughter have been taken, Novak attempts suicide, but he is saved by Foyle. Meanwhile Fred Dawson, a crippled former POW, arrives back at his farm to find his wife and child being helped in the farm work by Johann, a German POW. Suspecting his wife Rose of an affair with Johann and resenting his easy manner with Fred and Rose's son, the couple argue, and Johann is later found dead after escaping the camp. Foyle finally finds that Novak had attempted to get himself convicted of Worth's murder to save Peter Phelps, a mentally disturbed airman at the institution whom Novak had found by Worth's body with bloodied hands. In fact Worth's murderer was the institution's head, Dr Campbell, whom Worth was blackmailing over Campbell's affair with Phelps' wife. However, Foyle also finds a witness that saw that Novak murdered Johann after hearing him speak German, out of anger at the concentration camps - though subsequently, he heard news that his daughter had survived. Fred Dawson asks his wife if anything had gone on between her and Johann and is relieved to hear that while he was "sweet on" her, she was waiting for her "sweetheart". Fred, his wife and their son walk back to their farm all holding hands. | ||||
| Writer: Anthony Horowitz | Director: Tristram Powell | Airdate: 20 April 2008 (UK) | Set: May 1945 | Episode 19 (6:3) |
| Guests: Mark Bazeley, John Ramm, Jay Benedict, Frances Grey, Martin Savage, Jay Simpson, Paul Thornley, Ellie Haddington, Frank Mills, Joe Montana | ||||
| With VE Day upon them, Foyle is asked to represent the police on the councils' celebration committee. There he meets up with old friend, Major John Kieffer, who is representing the American forces. When a committee member is killed, however, the celebrations take a back seat, as Foyle sets out to uncover the murderer. Along the way he must delve into secrets that the Allied forces wish to keep hidden. | ||||
Foyle's son returns in this episode, as do the US Captain John Kieffer (from "Invasion") and the recurring character Hilda Pierce, played by Ellie Haddington (from the episodes "War Games" and "The French Drop").
A major plotline is the Slapton Sands disaster and the subsequent cover-up. Others include the ongoing preparations for the celebration of VE Day in Hastings (including profiteering on the sale of Union Jacks) and the difficulties for returning servicemen of adapting to civilian life.
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