Foyle's War Series Six
Encyclopedia
Series Six of the ITV programme Foyle's War
Foyle's War
Foyle's War is a British detective drama television series set during World War II, created by screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz, and was commissioned by ITV after the long-running series Inspector Morse came to an end in 2000. It has aired on ITV since 2002...

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.

"Plan of Attack"

Writer: Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Craig Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children's novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's...

 
Director: Tristram Powell
Tristram Powell
Tristram Powell is a television and film director. He was educated at Eton College. His credits include American Friends, episodes of series five and six of Foyle's War, and adaptations of the novels The Ghost Writer and Falling.Powell is the son of the novelist Anthony Powell and Lady Violet...

 
Airdate: 6 January 2008 (UK) Set: April 1944 Episode 17 (6:1)
Guests: Fiona Glascott
Fiona Glascott
Fiona Glascott is an Irish actress. She was nominated for an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in Film/TV for 2003's Goldfish Memory....

, Martin Hutson, Julian Wadham
Julian Wadham
-Career:He has appeared on television as both Charles II and George V...

, Robert Whitelock, Nicholas Day, Elizabeth McKechnie
Elizabeth McKechnie
Elizabeth "Liz" McKechnie is an actress who has worked extensively in film and television.She is known for a wide range of leading roles in theatre, TV and film:...

, Malcolm Sinclair
Malcolm Sinclair
Malcolm Sinclair is a British stage and television actor. He is perhaps best known for his role as 'Assistant Chief Constable Freddy Fisher' in the television series Pie in the Sky , although he has an extensive number of film, television and theatre roles to his credit...

, Philip Fox
Philip Fox (actor)
Philip "Phil" Fox is an English film and television actor, known particularly for comic roles. His appearances include Genie in the House, Maurice, People Like Us, Waking the Dead, Maxwell, Midsummer Murders and Foyle's War...

, Vince Leigh, Clifford Rose
Clifford Rose
Clifford Rose is a British classical actor.He was born in Herefordshire. He was educated at the King's School, Worcester and King's College London, before appearing in rep and with the Royal Shakespeare Company....

, Michael Jayston
Michael Jayston
Michael Jayston is a Nottingham-born English actor.- Early life :He attended the Becket Grammar School in West Bridgford, then worked briefly as a trainee accountant at the offices of the National Coal Board before obtaining a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to train as an...

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.

Character and plot development

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
Cartography
Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.The fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to:*Set the map's...

 facility at Beverley Lodge, having been recommended for the job by her seniors at the Mechanised Transport Corps
Mechanised Transport Corps
The Mechanised Transport Corps , sometimes erroneously called the Motor Transport Corps, was a British women's organisation that existed during the Second World War. It was a civilian uniformed organisation which provided drivers for government departments and other agencies...

 (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.

Historical context

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
Unconditional surrender
Unconditional surrender is a surrender without conditions, in which no guarantees are given to the surrendering party. In modern times unconditional surrenders most often include guarantees provided by international law. Announcing that only unconditional surrender is acceptable puts psychological...

 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
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plans by members of the Abwehr to assassinate Adolf Hitler...

 towards such aims are mentioned, the fictional Francis Wood (holding the fictional bishopric of Cirencester
Cirencester
Cirencester is a market town in east Gloucestershire, England, 93 miles west northwest of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswold District. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural College, the oldest agricultural...

) leads the movement (in place of the real-life George Bell
George Bell (bishop)
George Kennedy Allen Bell was an Anglican theologian, Dean of Canterbury, Bishop of Chichester, member of the House of Lords and a pioneer of the Ecumenical Movement.-Early career:...

, Bishop of Chichester
Bishop of Chichester
The Bishop of Chichester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese covers the Counties of East and West Sussex. The see is in the City of Chichester where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity...

), and the character of Samantha's vicar uncle Aubrey Stewart (Brian Poyser
Brian Poyser
Brian Poyser is an English actor whose career started in the early 1960s. His appearances include the musical Poppy, the BBC Television Shakespeare , the series Sex, Chips & Rock n' Roll, an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot, and as the recurring character the Revd Aubrey Stewart in two...

) 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
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...

.

"Broken Souls"

Writer: Michael Chaplin   Director: Simon Langton  Airdate: 13 April 2008 (UK) Set: October 1944 Episode 18 (6:2)
Guests: Nicholas Woodeson
Nicholas Woodeson
Nicholas Woodeson is an English film and television actor.-Education:Woodeson attended Marlborough College and studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.-Film:...

, Graham Crowden
Graham Crowden
Clement Graham Crowden was a Scottish actor. He was best known for his many appearances in television comedy dramas and films, often playing eccentric 'offbeat' scientist, teacher and doctor characters.-Early life:...

, Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell (actor)
Duncan Bell is a Scottish stage and screen actor.In September 2001 he played Sergeant Dennis Merton in Britain's biggest TV drama series Heartbeat...

, Phyllida Law
Phyllida Law
-Personal life:Law was born in Glasgow, the daughter of William and Megsie Law, who divorced after World War II. She was married to Eric Thompson from 1957 until his death in 1982. Their two children Emma and Sophie Thompson are both actresses...

, Natasha Little
Natasha Little
Natasha Little is a British actress. She is best known for her work on British television, but has also featured in many film and theatre roles.- Early life :...

, Joseph Mawle
Joseph Mawle
-Biography:Mawle graduated from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2002 in the same year he appeared in the Irish Hurling TV adverts for Guinness. He began work in the theatre prior to training at Bristol mainly for Box Clever Theatre Company and in his own production of 'Solo Hamlet'He landed his...

, Roger Sloman
Roger Sloman
Roger Sloman is an English actor. Born in the Harlesden district of London, he has performed in dozens of television and film appearances since the late 1970s...

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.

"All Clear"

Writer: Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Craig Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children's novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's...

 
Director: Tristram Powell
Tristram Powell
Tristram Powell is a television and film director. He was educated at Eton College. His credits include American Friends, episodes of series five and six of Foyle's War, and adaptations of the novels The Ghost Writer and Falling.Powell is the son of the novelist Anthony Powell and Lady Violet...

 
Airdate: 20 April 2008 (UK) Set: May 1945  Episode 19 (6:3)
Guests: Mark Bazeley, John Ramm
John Ramm
John Ramm is a British comedian and actor. He plays Raymond Box in the National Theatre of Brent, and has also appeared on film and television in Robin Hood , The Palace, Foyle's War and as Makepeace's neighbour in Shakespeare in Love.On stage, he has appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company...

, Jay Benedict
Jay Benedict
Jay Benedict is an American actor, best known in the United Kingdom for his role as Captain John Kieffer in Foyle's War .He has lived and worked in Europe since the 1960s...

, Frances Grey
Frances Grey (actress)
Frances Grey is a Scottish actress, perhaps most famous for her portrayal of D.S. Kate Beauchamp in the BBC television series Messiah...

, Martin Savage
Martin Savage (actor)
Martin Savage is a British film, stage and television actor.He appeared in both seasons of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's television series Extras as camp scriptwriter Damon Beesley and in The Thick of It television series specials as Nick Hanway...

, Jay Simpson
Jay Simpson (actor)
Jay Simpson is a prolific English film, television and stage actor.Simpson is perhaps best known in television for portraying cockney desk sergeant Ian 'Brookie' Brooke in Foyle's War, he has also appeared on television in Recovery with David Tennant and Sarah Parish, Hot Money, Bad Crowd, A Touch...

, Paul Thornley, Ellie Haddington
Ellie Haddington
Ellie Haddington is a British actress who had a starring role in 2005 and 2006 as Governing Governor Joy Masterton in the ITV1 prison drama Bad Girls....

, Frank Mills, Joe Montana
Joe Montana (actor)
Joe Montana is an actor, probably best known for his role as Marine in The Bourne Identity .-Filmography:-References:...

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.

Character and plot development

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
Ellie Haddington
Ellie Haddington is a British actress who had a starring role in 2005 and 2006 as Governing Governor Joy Masterton in the ITV1 prison drama Bad Girls....

 (from the episodes "War Games" and "The French Drop").

Historical context

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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