Foyle's War-The Complete First Season (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	391:09
RSDL / Flipper	No/No Multi Disc Set (4)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jeremy Silberston Gavin Millar Giles Foster
Studio Distributor	Icon Entertainment	Starring	Michael Kitchen Honeysuckle Weeks Anthony Howell Julian Overden Geoffrey Freshwater
Case	?
RPI	$69.95	Music	Jim Parker

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

   There have been many high-quality English mystery television series produced over the years including Poirot, Miss Marple, Midsomer Murders and many more. This series though,  which started in 2002, is a cut above those as it not only includes entertaining mysteries but is also a revealing drama about life on the home front during wartime and contains fully-rounded and interesting leading characters. Unlike many of the sleuths involved in other series, the crime fighting team here are revealed more fully which makes them easier for the audience to engage with and feel empathy for.

    This series is set during 1940 and follows the cases of Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen), an English coastal town's police chief and a frustrated man who would rather be more directly involved in the war effort. He is a veteran of the First World War and an honest, composed and dogged detective who investigates crimes such as sabotage, murder, racketeering and treason. His team consists of his driver, Samantha 'Sam' Stuart (Honeysuckle Weeks), a young woman who has been transferred from another women's unit to be his driver and Detective Sergeant Paul Milner (Anthony Howell), a badly injured war hero who is slowly coming to terms with his missing leg. Sam starts out as being just his driver but soon gets involved in solving the crimes and sometimes working undercover. Another important recurring character is Foyle's son Andrew (Julian Ovenden), a fighter pilot.

    The stories are woven around real life events from history such as the Luftwaffe raids over England and the rescue from France of British soldiers by small boats.

    This first series consists of four movie-length episodes over four single-layer discs. Currently, the last series of Foyle's War (the sixth) is being made in England. In total, 19 episodes will be made. The series was written by long-term English mystery television script writer Anthony Horowitz, who has written episodes of Poirot and Midsomer Murders. In this series, however, he created the stories and characters from scratch and wrote the screenplays. The casting and acting are both fantastic especially Michael Kitchen in the lead role. This series is available either in standard edition four disc amaray case or a special edition fold-out digipak. Otherwise the editions are the same.

    The four episodes are:

1. The German Woman - A German music professor and his wife are to be interned as enemy aliens despite having fled Germany to escape persecution. The wife dies during their transport. Foyle catches a man who is charging people money to be removed from the draft. The nephew of the interned music professor seeks help from his former employer who has a German wife. She ends up dead after a horrific riding incident.
2. The White Feather - A young girl gets caught cutting telephone wires, a crime punishable by death. She works at a local hotel ('The White Feather') which seems to be a hotbed of anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathy. When someone is shot at the hotel Foyle must investigate.
3. A Lesson in Murder - A conscientious objector gets arrested and the police give him a rough welcome. He is found hung in his cell the next morning. Sam agrees to go out with a guy who seems to be mixed up in something untoward. David 'Doctor Who' Tennant guests.
4. Eagle Day - A man's body is found in a bombed out house with a knife in his chest. Andrew Foyle gets reassigned to a clandestine operation near Hastings where there was a mysterious death amongst the staff.

    An excellent season of a subtle and different English mystery series.

Video

    The video quality is reasonable but no more.

    The feature is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio (16x9 enhanced), which I believe is the original aspect ratio.

    The picture is not very sharp, disappointingly so for a series of the relatively recent age. There is some minor low level noise. MPEG grain is quite prevalent in backgrounds and it sometimes turns into macro-blocking especially in shadows and single colour backgrounds. Faces are also sometimes affected such as at 63:16 in Episode Two. Shadow detail is poor.

    The colour is good but there is some colour bleeding especially from light colours. The colour scheme is mostly khakis and brown evoking the feelings of the time.

    Artefacts included some minor aliasing, some edge enhancement plus some spots and splodges of white.

    There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is good with no major issues.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue is mostly clear and easy to understand and there are no problem with audio sync. Some accents and a bit of mumbling made some lines of dialogue hard to decipher. Subtitles would have been a great help.

    The score of this series is by Jim Parker and includes a nicely done theme plus some other incidental music.

    The surround speakers are not used.

    The subwoofer added some bass to the music, however this is a function of bass management rather than the soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    None

Menu

    The menu included an introduction and music. It is quite simple only allowing for scene selection.

    This series is available in both Region 1 and 2 . Both of these are the same except for the PAL/NTSC difference. The Region 4 version of this series (when compared to the others) misses out on:

• Interview with the writer
• Production Notes
• Cast filmographies

    The Region 1 or 2 versions of this series miss out on:

• Nothing

    Unfortunately either of the other regions releases are superior.

    An excellent season of a subtle and different English mystery series. The video quality is reasonable.

    The audio quality is good.
  
   There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall