Friday Night Foyle’s War Club: Plan of Attack!

Friday Night Foyle’s War Club: Plan of Attack!

Club notes: Tonight all the Actual Members of the Friday Night Foyle’s War Club will be watching together again except for Lady Egality (Club Treasurer) who has a brand new puppy!

 Happiness is a Warm Puppy!

The Agent and I went round to see her -she is completely delicious.

Club Minutes:

Apologies: Lady Egality

Attendees: (Virtual): Martha from America, MohairMK, Kitchentease, C. Nelson, Digby D, ayresorchids,Miss Peppermint and British Detectives from America.  (Actual): The Graf von Blommehön (Chairman), Lady Liberty (Club Secretary) Lady Sebright and Colonel Pyncheon

Venue:  Castle Coop and various international locations.

Announcements:

1. The Graf von Blommehön, our Club Chairman, is delighted to announce that now the Club is now watching Series 5, we are adding a ‘Series 5′ Rosette to be worn with the Club tie.

Here is yours to cut out and keep!

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and here I am showing it off!

If any Club Member – Virtual or Actual – has any suggestions we might implement in our future meetings, please let Lady Liberty, the Club Secretary, know.

2. Tonight, in honour of Lady Egality and Sir Plym’s new addition to the family, we shall be drinking a small glass of Bubbly which will be accompanied by a few ‘Devils on Horseback’ which Lady Sebright is very kindly bringing. Yum.

A Toast!

A request to all Virtual Members: Lady Egality would be delighted if you would join us in raising your glasses/mugs in a toast to wish Shadow ‘long life and happiness‘.

Thank you!

3. A reminder to all Club Members – virtual and actual: don’t forget to place a Foyle’s War picture in the room where you are attending the meeting.

Plan of Attack!

Tonight the International Friday Night Foyle’s War Club will be watching:  Episode 1, Series 5*

Plot:

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. (Wikipedia)

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’scartography 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”, 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:

The cartography activity at fictitious Beverly Lodge is based on the activities of the secret mapmaking activities at Hughenden Manor during World War II,^[2] which wasn’t known until two years before the shooting of this episode. The series’ author, Anthony Horowitz, based much of the story on the experiences of Victor Gregory, who was one of the mapmakers at Hughenden, and who also was engaged as a consultant during the shooting of the episode.^[3]

Another 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.

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.

(The above information is taken from Wikipedia )

*N.B. The Episode categorisation is a complete muddle – The I.F.N.F.W.C. Committee has decided for clarity’s sake to categorise each episode as it is named on the ‘Foyle’s War: The Complete Collection’ dvd disc set. Wikipedia however, categorises ‘Plan of Attack’ as Episode 1, Series 6

Yours looking forward to toasting both the new puppy and DCS Foyle with a small glass of fizz,