"Foyle's War" Series 8 / Season 9 - Review

The discrepancy between "Series 8" (the British labelling) and "Season 9" (American) stems from the American splitting of one of the British Series: I think it was Series 4, which had a "Part 1" and a "Part 2" in the U.K.

Series 6 was post-war. Series 7 saw Foyle recruited by MI5, and he continues to work for them in this, the final series. And that's a problem for me: I felt these two series were well done, but I enjoyed him much more as a detective that as a spy - even though he spends most of his time as a spy solving murder mysteries. These episodes are more tense, in that there's more personal risk for Foyle as he sticks his nose into the business of large organizations or governments that are very much alive (unlike his previous "clients," who were generally quite dead). But I also found them less personal: people were killed for convenience, not for reasons of passion or personal plans. And I don't like either of these aspects as much as his police work, although I understand that a change was probably needed.

It was mildly amusing (although not very happy) to see the series go out with a literal "bang" - a hand grenade, not something we'd really seen at any other time in the series (explosives once, but that's all - and not a hand grenade). Literal "bang" or not, my disappointment at the end of the series is tempered by the fact that it's probably best it ended, and the fact that I hadn't been liking the series recently anyway ...