Foyle's war

The other British series I'm currently watching is "Foyle's War," a detective show set in England during WWII. Michael Kitchen plays Inspector Foyle, whom we first meet in the spring of 1940, as the war was just getting started and fears of a German invasion caused tensions to run high. Foyle's son is off the join the RAF and Foyle, who fought in WWI, is feeling underused as just another police detective, but the cases he works on all have direct ties to the war situation and all reveal interesting tidbits of war history. One episode has at its center a pro-Nazi group which sympathizes with the Germans, doesn't like the Jews, and wants England to quit the war; the group, the Friday Club, is based on a real organization of the era called the Right Club. Another is about the rampant anti-German feeling which ran strong at the time, and one of the plot points centers on the internment camps in England where Germans who were considered security risks were put, a fact I knew nothing about until now.

So far, I've only seen the first season (four shows) and each show begins with a death or murder which often ends up not being terribly important to the plot as it unfolds. The other regular characters include Foyle's driver (Honeysuckle Weeks), his assistant (Anthony Howell) who came back from defending Finland with his leg shot off, and Foyle's son (Julian Ovenden) who pops in and out. Kitchen is very good, quite subtle; there is often more going in his face and body language than in his dialogue. He's creating a character who is likable but who will always keep himself at a distance from others, even his son. Both Howell and Ovenden are very handsome, and Howell is downright hot; I believe I said to Don during an episode, "Why doesn't every member of this cast want to have sex with him?"--though I may have used a common vulgarity in place of "have sex with." The shows are 100 minutes each, and would work better at closer to 90; as it is, they feel a bit padded out. But I intend to continue watching the other seasons which are available on DVD. This and The Vicar of Dibley are so much better than practically anything on American television right now.