Series / Foyle's War

The main cast. Left to right - Samantha Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen) and Paul Milner (Anthony Howell)

"All illegal. All morally unacceptable. How would you like to justify it?"
"Necessities of war, Mr. Foyle — in which there is no morality."

— "The French Drop"

British crime drama, debuted in 2002, starring Michael Kitchen as DCS Christopher Foyle, a high-ranking detective in Hastings during World War II. When his requests for transfer into the war effort are denied, the modest, mild-tempered Foyle begrudgingly returns to his duties on the Home Front, only to find that his job is more in-demand than ever, as people all over are taking advantage of the panic, confusion and chaos caused by the outbreak of war to try and get away with murder — in many cases literally.

Foyle is assisted in his investigations by his driver, Samantha Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), a perky Mechanized Transport Corps (MTC) officer transferred to the police for the duration owing to Foyle's inability^note Apparently to drive, not an uncommon thing then, ^note  Sam’s actual role is to ensure that Foyle has a car available when needed, as well as drive - cars then, needing regular and frequent maintenance, and it is a pool car, not specifically allocated to him and who eagerly involves herself — at times to Foyle's exasperation — in the investigations that arise, and his sergeant, Paul Milner, an ex-soldier who rejoined the police after his leg was shot off during the Battle of Norway. Another recurring character was Foyle's son Andrew, a dashing Spitfire pilot with the RAF.

The show often attempts to subvert the traditional myth of wartime Britain as a place where everyone pulled together for the common good, showing how scheming, cowardly, cynical and desperate people at the time could be, and the various ethical and moral dilemmas that fighting against the Nazis raised; a common theme raised in the series is the ethics of police work and crime during wartime, with many of the more cynical characters querying the validity of investigating seemingly trivial crimes (and even murder), during a war that killed thousands every day. As such, along with the murders and intrigues standard for the genre, early episodes in particular often focus on draft-dodgers, fascist sympathizers, black-marketeers, looters from bombed-out houses, the unfair treatment of conscientious objectors, homosexuals, enemy aliens and so forth. Episodes are often themed around a particular event or issue that occurred during the war (such as the Blitz, Dunkirk, the entry of the Russians and the Americans into the war and the secret weapons and tactics employed by the British during the time), with Foyle often coming into conflict with both higher-ups and Secret Service operatives when his investigations begin to touch upon matters which the War Office would prefer were kept secret.

When ITV decided to stop making the series and make two final episodes, one each for 1944 and 1945, there were many complaints; series creator Anthony Horowitz certainly wasn't happy. In the event, it was not only given a concluding season, ending on V-E Day, but subsequently renewed for three more seasons set in the war's aftermath: in the final two seasons, Foyle, having retired from the police force, is recruited by MI5 and becomes involved in the early days of the Cold War.

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Provides examples of:

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: In "Invasion," Andrew writes from his new posting to tell Sam that he's found someone else. As soon as she reads the letter, she accepts the advances of the young American soldier who's been asking her out, and she still isn't ready to forgive in "All Clear."
• Ace Pilot: Andrew and his friends.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Sam, while driving Foyle, mentions that one of her MTC^note  Motorized Transport Corps instructors was nicknamed "Chloroform" because she and everyone else fell asleep during his lectures:
  Foyle: What did he teach?
  Sam: Road safety.
  Foyle: ...Now you tell me.
• All for Nothing: The opinion expressed by a man who bribed a judge to give his son conscientious-objector status. Having seen all sorts of horror in World War I only to be hurled into war with Germany again twenty years later, he decides to keep his son from what he forsees as an ultimately futile horrorshow.
• Amateur Sleuth:
  • Sam doesn't hide her curiosity about the crimes Foyle investigates and often makes suggestions or conjectures of her own—though sometimes she does offer useful insights when some aspect of the crime involves something she knows about (like machinery or, in one case, gardening). She gets her wish in "Among the Few" when Foyle places her undercover in a fuel depot because he doesn't have any actual officers available for the job and lifts some key evidence in spite of getting locked in a room with a (faulty) bomb. When she's with MI-5 and goes undercover as a companion and reader for an invalid, she names Agatha Christie as her favorite author in the interview (in the earlier episode "The French Drop", her uncle mentions that he remembers her always reading Edgar Wallace's books as a young girl).
  • Joe Pearson, an 11-year-old evacuee staying at the Gascoigne's country manor, spends his days running around and cataloguing everything he sees in an exercise book. He runs into Sam and Foyle when he's recording their license plate. He also saw Judge Gascoigne accept a £2000 bribe, which is why Gascgoigne killed him.
• Anachronism Stew: Former SS officer-turned-MI5 asset Karl Strasser refers to himself as a supposed Schreibtischtäter, or "desk criminal," a term widely used to describe the bureaucrats of the Holocaust who organized the killings but did not partake in any violence themselves. However, the term did not garner widespread use in Germany until the 1960's, after Hannah Arendt used it to describe Adolf Eichmann.
• Anger Born of Worry: Foyle is incensed that Sam went snooping around in the fuel depot's office and almost got killed by a bomb.
• Armor-Piercing Response: In "War Games", Reginald Walker offers a half-hearted apology for shouting at his wife, when she dared to object to him setting the dogs on a group of children. Her response is calm, collected, and carved from ice:
  It wasn't control you lost. It was the illusion... that you're a civilized man.
• Artistic License – Religion: In "Plan of Attack," a Catholic man goes to confessional for breaking the Sixth Commandment—committing murder. In Catholicism, this is the Fifth Commandment. The Sixth Commandment in Catholicism is to not commit adultery.
• Ascended Extra: Hilda Pierce first appeared as a one-off character in the second season, and made enough of an impression that she was brought back for a couple more appearances during the war years. With the post-war shift of focus to the secret service, she became a regular character and was central to the plot of the final episode.
• Asshole Victim: Gordon Drake. Not even his own wife feels sorry about his death and she was happy to hear he finally got his just desserts.
• The Atoner: Hilda Pierce in "Elise", after realizing who was responsible for the agents' deaths in France during the war.
• Ax-Crazy: The culprit in "Bleak Midwinter". Before they know Harry's the killer, Sam describes him as "putting on an act" at his girlfriend's funeral. He poisons his girlfriend for wanting out of a safebreaking scheme, then kills his girlfriend's old friend—Jane Milner—for getting a letter that might implicate him. His boss at the mechanic's suggests that the conscription board took a look at him and decided they didn't need his help. Later, Harry freaks out when Sam coincidentally visits their shop and accidentally stabs his own partner-in-crime when trying to get to her. He finally tries to escape capture by taking a hostage and then blowing himself, herself, and Detective Foyle up. Fortunately, the "nitroglycerin" his girlfriend stole for him had been denaturalized by her beforehand.
• Babies Ever After:
  • "All Clear", intended at the time to be the final episode, has a subplot about Milner's wife giving birth to their first child.
  • "Elise", the actual final episode (so far), ends with Sam informing Foyle that she's pregnant and inviting him to be the child's godfather.
• Back for the Dead
• Badass Longcoat: Foyle has a cool looking brown jacket he wears throughout the series.
• Bath Suicide: Dr. Novak attempts this after learning that his family was sent to the concentration camps. Foyle and Milner find him in time.
• Batman Gambit: Judge Gascoigne does this to get rid of Joe, the Blitz evacuee. He fakes a threatening phone call asking him to come to the summer house but doesn't go, knowing that it will excite the boy's curiosity. Sure enough, Joe sneaks into the house and sets off the grenade rigged to the door.
• Behind Every Great Man: Hilda Pierce is the real power in MI5. Lampshaded by the Americans in "Sunflower."
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Foyle is often underestimated as a kindly-looking father figure type, but he never compromises his moral convictions. An old flame of Foyle's who appears in one episode notes that he's grown "very hard" since childhood, which makes you wonder if his politeness is something of a mask.
  • Most culprits in the series fit this description, as well as some of the not-quite-so harmless victims.
• Big Eater: Sam, who wheedles more than one invitation to dinner or tea out of Foyle.
• Big Fancy House: It's a British murder mystery show and therefore required to show off some very fine manors belonging to the local Sir (or Lady) Whomever. Often the epicenter of the crimes committed, though a few are requisitioned by the War Office and turned into intelligence headquarters or medical centers.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Major Wesker in "Killing Time". He pretends to be sympathetic to Gabe Kelly and his girlfriend Mandy Dean, saying he'll help them get married and start a life in America. Instead we find out he never intended to help, and in addition to stringing them along blackmailed Mandy for sex before murdering her and framing Gabe when she tried to turn the tables.
• Bittersweet Ending: The series finale, "Elise." Sam finally tells Foyle about the pregnancy and asks him to be godfather. However, Hilda Pierce commits suicide, taking Ian Woodhead with her, and Foyle's trust in Elizabeth Addis has been destroyed.
• Black Market: Everything from food to lumber and metal to silk stockings.
• Black Market Produce:
  • "The Funk Hole" has a dishonest butcher who robs a food depot with his two young cronies, resulting in one of them getting shot and killed by the Home Guard.
  • In "Bleak Midwinter", set in rationing-bound World War II England, Foyle busts an operation that's been smuggling restricted food, leading to a subplot for the rest of the episode about who's going to end up with the food once it's done being held as evidence.
  • Comes up again in "Elise," where the police show no interest in prosecuting black marketeers after the war. It helps that Chief Superintendent Usborne is profiting from the arrangement.
• Black Shirt: In "Trespass", a former member of Mosley's black shirts was attempting to start up a similar organisation in post-war Britain. Although he claims to be in favour of a single European government, in his first speech he reveals it will be a Europe free of Jews, Slavs and other 'undesirables' (in fact, he names most of the ethnic groups of Europe as people who will be expelled from Europe). He whips a mob into a frenzy where they murder a pair of harmless Polish refugees in the mistaken belief they are Jewish.
• Blitz Evacuees: Frequently. "The Funk Hole" involves seditious (that is, utterly despairing) comments in an air raid shelter that are misattributed to Foyle. Inspector Collier arranged the whole misunderstanding to exact revenge on a warden named Vaudrey whose inattention left two hundred evacuees stranded in a school that was bombed — among whom were Collier's mother and sister.
• Bluffing the Murderer
• Bomb Disposal: "War of Nerves" involves an engineering squad that travels around detonating unexploded bombs. Their leader says that the Germans have now begun deliberately dropping bombs that won't go off in hopes of killing the men sent to deal with them.
• Bribe Backfire: In "The French Drop", while Foyle is being given a tour of the British Special Operations Executive's headquarters, he sees an old "friend", ex-pimp Leo Mason, giving a lecture on the best ways of suborning enemy agents. As he explains, bribery is a popular option, but cautions them to remember that anyone willing to accept a bribe is, by his very nature, untrustworthy.
• Brick Joke: Sam's uncle's green wine.
• British Brevity: The longest seasons are only four (movie-length) episodes each. The shortest is two.
• Bury Your Gays: Andrew's friend Rex is forced to admit to Foyle that he's gay (and in love with Andrew) and dies on a mission shortly thereafter. It's implied this was suicide; Andrew describes watching his plane go down and being surprised not to see him bail out. The only other time homosexuality is mentioned, the guy in question is already dead... until "The Eternity Ring", where one of Foyle's MI5 handlers turns out to be gay, and survives the episode — with an undeserved beating, but also with career intact.
• Cassandra Truth: Andrew Del Mar in "High Castle" is a nasty old man, a racist, and a war criminal who provided material assistance to the Nazis. However, whenever his son ignores his insights, things go badly. Among other things, the younger Del Mar would not have been murdered by a Soviet assassin had he followed his father's advice.
• Catchphrase:
  • Foyle will usually introduce himself to others with something along the lines of "My name's Foyle, I'm a policeman." (In the later seasons, after he's retired from the police force and been recruited by MI5, introductions instead often feature the exchange "What's your interest? Are you a policeman?" "Something like that.")
  • "...Right," is also Foyle's preferred pat response to anyone being abrasive, controversial or evasive on first meeting him. If he's being shuffled around by bureaucratic oversight or told a case is falling out of his jurisdiction, you can expect this word to fall out of his mouth. Given his need to be an unflappable, cool-headed policeman, it's to be expected.
• Celibate Hero: Foyle, during the course of the series. He's a widower with a grown son, but shows little or no interest in the prospect of remarrying.
• Child Soldiers: A young British man who is the son of a businessman seeking to become a prospective Nazi profiteer, is revealed to have spent time in Germany when Hitler rose to power; he has multiple Nazi memorabilia, including a picture where he is shown to have been part of the Hitler Youth.
• Chute Sabotage: In "They Fought in the Fields", a German airman is found dead because his chute failed to open. Later events in the episode reveal that he grabbed the parachute intended for the plane's RADAR operator, which had been sabotaged so as to preserve the secrecy of German RADAR systems.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: The commander of the prison camp exclaims "Bloody 'ell, I need a smoke," when informed that one of his prisoners has been murdered.
• Color Wash: Series 8 and 9 are desaturated and occasionally slightly green-grey in palette, giving Foyle and Sam's life a grey and drab look in the continuing difficulties of postwar Britain and their less-than-voluntary participation in MI-5's work.
• Connect the Deaths: Played straight and averted in different episodes. Sometimes a witness for one crime will turn up dead as part of a different thing happening (such as the witness in "Bad Blood" being infected by escaped anthrax and dying before Foyle can interview her).
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Reginald Walker from "War Games" believes that the supremacy of business overrides any war or considerations of morality. When Foyle presents Walker with the imminent destruction of his business by exposing him as a Nazi sympathizer and collaborator—because there are, in fact, some things more important than money—Walker shoots himself.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Christopher Foyle is named for a bookshop owner who Horowitz thought had a good name for a 1940's detective (Christina Foyle, who passed the shop to her nephew Christopher when she died). The real Christopher Foyle appears in "Bad Blood" very briefly when the fictional Foyle says hello and that he got "the book you sent."
  • Anthony Horowitz is the ship's officer who takes Foyle's ticket at the end of "The Hide."
• Cryptic Conversation:
  • Stafford, one of the staff at the spy school in "The French Drop", talks with Foyle about some of the dirty tricks they're teaching students to use, and pointedly mentions carborundum powder for locking up car brakes. After Maccoby is arrested for attempting revenge by using it in Foyle's car, Foyle thanks Stafford for the warning but notes that it would have been more useful if it was less covert.
  • In "War Games," Harry tells his sister Lucy that what he stole from the Walkers is being looked after by some friends and will only describe them as "busy." Foyle later helps her work out that he hid it in the beehive—busy bees.
• Cut Himself Shaving: After his wife is found murdered, the search of Milner's house turns up a shirt of his with blood on the cuffs. He says "Is this the part where I say I cut myself shaving?" It's actually her blood, but it was planted by someone else to frame him.
• Cyanide Pill: The murderer in "The Funk Hole" takes one from a resident and compels Vaudrey to swallow it by offering a choice between agonizing death by gunshot wounds or "going to sleep." However, the pill is not instantaneous as he had assumed, and Vaudrey lives long enough to be discovered by the landlady and utter some revealing Last Words.
• Da Chief: Inverts the stereotype in that Foyle never loses his temper.
• Da Editor: The editor of a local paper in "Fifty Ships" is an impatient, blunt-spoken taskmaster who isn't keen on being interrupted in haranguing his staff so he can speak to Foyle. However, he pointedly defends his missing reporter's habit of sleeping in his car (for fear of the Blitz) as not cowardice, but the natural psychological consequence of having to go and take photographs of bombed-out houses several times a week.
• Dead-Hand Shot: The unfortunate smuggler whose lorry (carrying barrels of gasoline) explodes at the start of "Among the Few". The fire mostly obscures his head and shoulders, but his hideously burned hand is fully visible on the wheel.
• Deadpan Snarker: Foyle is the master of the well-timed cutting remark. For those criminals who earn his contempt rather than his sympathy he gives a pretty good Death Glare as well.
• Death Faked for You: Karl Strasser's "murder" in "Sunflower," arranged by British Intelligence so they can sneak him out of the country.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • "Enemy Fire" examines the changing attitudes towards combat stress, fatigue, and trauma through a Shell-Shocked Veteran from World War I and Andrew Foyle's development into one as a pilot. The veteran was actually being blackmailed by someone who knew he'd shot himself in the foot because he couldn't take the horror anymore. In contrast, Andrew's commander promotes Andrew out of the flying service into a instructor position, understanding and empathetic to the fact that he's gone past what he can mentally endure.
  • The treatment of black American soldiers (and any English girls who chose to take up with them) features heavily in the sixth-series episode "Killing Time."
  • Attempting suicide was still a criminal offense and often seen as a cowardly act. The false framing of a young man's death as a suicide is treated as worse than if it had been death in an accident (though the fact that it was to cover his CO's incompetence is the main offence). Particularly evident in "Casualties of War," where a nun at a hospital tuts over the grave sin a young woman committed by trying to walk into the sea.
• Determinator: Foyle. He will not leave a crime uninvestigated or let an injustice stand if he can possibly help it. Hilda Pierce notes this as a key trait of his, and makes sure to tell him in "War Games" that Walker escaped punishment... because she thinks Foyle might like to continue being determined.
• Dirty Cop:
  • Foyle's first attempt to get transferred out of the police service is scotched when he realizes that his superior took a bribe to falsely designate the late Mrs. Beaumont as a refugee and refuses to let it slide.
  • Chief Superintendent Usborne in the final season.
• Dirty Old Man: Mr. Bennett, the man who runs the fuel depot in "Among the Few," likes to get overly friendly with his female workers and ogles them through the blinds of his office. Which is why his wife plans to frame him for racketeering.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Justified, as it's times of war, so the punishments are greater. Although most of the culprits know that they are going to be punished for their misdeeds or are only tangentially related to the crime, Foyle usually lets them know of how much they are underestimating the charges they are about to face, which are usually much, much graver than the culprits initially thought; in a couple of instances, Foyle argues logically for the charges and tells the culprits that they're going to face the death penalty, much to their surprise.
• Does Not Like Men: Barbara in "They Fought in the Fields." She had been married to an abusive husband. However, befriending Foyle and discussing their losses (her a son, him his wife) softens her cynicism.
• Doesn't Trust Those Guys: Obviously nobody likes "Jerry" when the Blitz is at its hottest and people in England are dying or losing their houses every night. Episodes set later in the war and post-war have various characters express the opinion that they ought to wipe the Germans out completely once newsreels begin to publicize the The Holocaust and the Nazis' manifold other crimes against humanity. This tends to complicate things for Foyle if a German (or someone who merely has a German name) is killed or otherwise involved in his current investigation.
• Domestic Abuse: There are a few throughout the series. They tend to become corpses partway through the episode.
• Double Meaning: Several episode titles. "The French Drop" is a well-known sleight of hand trick, but the episode revolves around a British agent killed after parachuting into France. "Bad Blood" refers both to the animosity between Ashford and Jenkins but also the anthrax contamination from the army experiments, which result in more literal bad blood when Sam is infectd.
• Draft Dodging: Featured several times. One episode featured a man with a heart condition who ran a racket where he would turn up at the medical exam of someone who had been called up, claiming to be that person, and fail due to his heart condition, thereby allowing them to avoid conscription.
• The Dreaded: Foyle, on occasion. In "The French Drop," Col. Wintringham thinks that he can handle Foyle like any other rural copper, despite Hilda Pierce's continual insistence that Foyle is clever, persistent, and dangerous, and is about to call down to the guard to let him in.
  Hilda: James, if you will take one piece of advice from me, it will be NOT to invite him in!
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Loads of people. Foyle particularly gets a lot of crooks to commit suicide after he lays out their schemes shattered before them.
  • In "All Clear", Griffiths takes an overdose of sleeping pills because Kiefer kept hounding him over the Slapton Sands disaster. This definitively ends Kiefer's friendship with Foyle.
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • In-universe; Foyle does not like people making jokes about murder. For example, in the first episode, the victim's rather spoiled step-daughter (played by Rosamund Pike) makes a rather snide crack about her being dead, prompting Foyle to bluntly explain to her precisely how gruesome and agonising her death would have been. The step-daughter promptly looks rather ashamed. And ill.
  • A fellow patrolman frames Milner for the murder of his wife as "a prank" because he considered him "stuffy". He was more than willing to take Milner's job after badmouthing him in Foyle's presence until the latter confronted him. According to the patrolman, he unwittingly let things balloon, but he wouldn't ultimately let Milner go to the gallows as the culprit. Unsuprisingly, Foyle drops the book on him.
• Eagleland:
  • The ugly American stereotype is inverted with Major John Kiefer, a highly professional officer who goes to great lengths to break down the barriers between his men and the locals. When we encounter him again in "All Clear" being openly rude to his British allies, it's not this trope but instead a clue that something is seriously wrong.
  • Inverted again in "Sunflower," where the Americans are impolite and also very much in the right about Karl Strasser. This is why Valentine and Foyle conspire to get him into their hands at the end.
  • Played straight in the case of Howard Paige.
  • A very ugly version of this comes up in "Killing Time" when the American military demands the imposition of a local "color bar" until they leave, even though England, although plenty racist, did not have de jure segregation.^note Although Hastings complies, in Real Life there were multiple instances of British locals siding with the African-American troops, who had generally arrived first and befriended the community, and at least one pub barred white soldiers instead.
• Eagle Squadron: In "The Hide", Foyle investigates the case of James Devereaux, the son of a distinguished local family who will be tried for treason for belonging to the British Free Corps, a unit composed of Englishmen fighting for Nazi Germany. If found guilty, Devereaux will be sentenced to death. (The real-life BFC was a curious, very minor sideshow operated by the SS, which never actually saw combat. However Truth in Television in that at least one member was subsequently executed for treason.)
• The Elites Jump Ship: The season two finale, "The Funk Hole", revolves around this trope: wealthy Londoners are staying for an extended period in a country house being rented out as a "guest home", pretending to be on vacation, or else busy with some kind of "work", when in fact they simply prefer not to have to take shelter from German bombs with the other, poorer civilians in London.
• Empty Shell: Mrs. Meredith tells Foyle and Milner that she has no feelings left after the death of her two sons in the war. This is why she isn't distraught or even upset that her husband—who was the same way—has been murdered.
• Establishing Character Moment: A sort of recurring example, in that Foyle's Catchphrase of "My name's Foyle, I'm a policeman," establishes both his no-nonsense nature and his fundamental modesty; it establishes who he is and why he's there quite bluntly, but Foyle is actually a Chief Superintendent, a high-ranking commanding officer, yet never once throws his weight around on this basis.
• Even Evil Has Standards: A captured Nazi spy who has witnessed a murder is convinced to help Foyle, despite having every reason not to want to do with him or his case, because Foyle appeals to his sense of justice; what he saw was nothing to do with the war, but murder plain and simple.
• Everyone Has Standards: Mr. Bishop, Howard Paige's handler, is fairly disgusted with his charge but as exposing Paige as a fraud and a murderer would create a scandal that would scuttle the effort to bring America into the war, so he will have to very apologetically keep Foyle from arresting him.
• Evolving Credits: The opening titles for the post-War/Cold War seasons, and associated arrangement of the theme music, are noticeably darker and less upbeat than the War years.
• External Combustion: A grenade wired to the steering wheel and rigged to explode when the door is opened is used to kill a former Nazi in "Sunflower". Or so it seems. Actually, the explosion was used to fake his death.
• False Flag Operation: In "Trespass", a British government black ops unit blows up ships earmarked to carry Jewish refugees to Palestine, posing as an Arab terrorist organisation called the Friends of Arab Palestine.
• Fanservice: In the episode "The Russian House" Detective Foyle examines the studio of a recently murdered artist Sam was working for. Apparently he was going to paint her nude and Foyle finds the complete pencils. Honeysuckle Weeks' expression during the scene is priceless.
• A Father to His Men: In "Elise," Ian Woodhead complains that Hilda Pierce was emotionally invested in her female agents, which is confirmed during the flashbacks. As we discover, Woodhead was responsible for getting several of those agents killed.
• Find the Cure!: "Bad Blood" involves Sam getting anthrax when she cuts her hand on an infected farm. Once Foyle works out that it came from an Army experiment, he marches into their office and threatens to return with more police, more Army officials, and most especially the press unless they give him and antidote. The major's underlings, who have already argued with him over the wisdom of their experiments, give him a bottle of streptomycin but they warn him that it's not guaranteed to cure her, just that it might help. Fortunately, it does.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: At the end of "War of Nerves," Captain Hammond asks which of the Talbots' heavies tortured and killed Ernie, and replies "I'm glad you're here" when one of them gives a nod of acknowledgement. Because the briefcase of "returned money" is rigged to explode, and now he'll be able to take the murderer with him.
• Flashback Effects: The flashbacks in "Elise" use an inversion of Monochrome Past, being brighter and more colorful than the scenes set in the drab present.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: In backstory; when Foyle was a soldier during the First World War, he had a relationship with a woman who had nursed him after he was injured.
• Foreshadowing: Collier's refrain of "war does different things to different people" whenever anyone tries to protest that Foyle would never commit sedition. He's referring to himself, losing his family when a simple lapse in paperwork stranded them in a bad air-raid shelter. His final repetition of the line, after Foyle sums up his murder of Vaudrey, ends with "look what it's done to me."
• For Want Of A Nail: In "Broken Souls." Dr. Novak had invited Foyle to join him at the movies, and Foyle declined. When Novak left early—unable to watch the newsreel footage from the concentration camps—he ran into an German POW who knocked him over and, in a moment of rage, killed him. When Foyle delivers his quiet summation, Novak uses this as another point when chance altered his life forever; if Foyle had been there with him, it would not have happened (although he does not try to cast responsibility onto Foyle).
• Frame-Up: Andrew is subject to one in "Eagle Day" when he starts getting too curious about why one of the RADAR plotters killed herself. Graham plants documents in his locker and uses a college misstep to detain him as a suspected spy and keep the Lucy Smith matter hushed up.
• Funny Background Event: Milner's sergeant being obviously terrified of the horses when Milner interviews a stablehand in "The Hide."
• Gallows Humor:
  • In "The German Woman", Foyle and Sam are helping the victims of a recent bombing raid. Foyle compliments Sam on her improvised bandage for one, and she confesses that her first aid instructor in the MTC said he'd prefer to bleed to death rather than be treated by her.
  • Bridges, a recovering burn victim in "Enemy Fire", warns Andrew not to stay in the hospital long or they'll have the skin off his arse for grafts, and jokes with Sam that his post-war career isn't likely to include acting or modeling.
• Gargle Blaster: A very serious version in "Invasion" with a pub that makes industrial-grade alcohol into whiskey for people who are tired of the weaker beer found under rationing—which is not safe no matter how you dilute or distill it. It severely sickens an American soldier, and it's the reason Milner's friend died. The alcohol made him blind so that he couldn't find the key to escape from a burning room.
• Gender-Blender Name: Sam isn't an unusual nickname for Samantha, but several individuals are surprised when Foyle's driver Sam is a woman.
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Many of the murderers are somehow essential to the war effort and use this to wriggle out of a well-deserved punishment. Not surprisingly, there are frequent Karma Houdinis.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Karl Strasser in "Sunflower," on the evil end of the scale.
• Gossip Evolution: Milner's argument with his wife in "Bleak Midwinter" somehow turns into a "violent" altercation by the time it reaches Foyle's office, according to the witnesses in the Cafe.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: A running theme of the series is that people on the Allied side, whether ordinary citizens or officials, did plenty of awful things too. Sometimes they're bad people taking the opportunity of war to cover their tracks, sometimes they've broken under the strain or personal tragedy, and numerous individuals try to argue with Foyle that the war and Britain's interests justify or necessitate their actions (be it covering up a spy's death from incompetent intelligence-gathering or deliberately cultivating anthrax). While he is sometimes overruled by higher-ranking officials, he never agrees that such immorality can be accepted.
• Hair-Trigger Explosive: Much of "Bleak Midwinter" revolves around happenings in a munitions factory where the workers have to follow a very strict dresscode to avoid generating a disastrous spark. A young woman named Grace dies by dropping the shell she's working on, and the foreman is later criticized for letting her work when she was clearly unwell. Later, it's revealed that her boyfriend Harry pressured her into stealing nitroglycerin for a safebreaking plot. When he shakes the vial, Foyle realizes that it's been denatured—the compound would be far too volitile to have been transported otherwise.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Milner in the first episode and Andrew in "Enemy Fire".
  • DCS Meredith is in one throughout the episode he is featured in, out of grief as he lost his two sons in the war.
• Heroes Gone Fishing: Foyle enjoys fly-fishing; He and Major Kiefer get to enjoy a brief respite from their respective duties, and form a friendship, while enjoying a brief fishing trip. Which presumably also supplements their rationed diet, into the bargain.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Repeatedly discussed when Foyle is asked (or required) to let off a murderer because they're vital to the war effort, or when the British side starts adopting morally questionable tactics, because if you're fighting the Nazis for their horrific immorality you have to be careful about which of your own principles you're willing to sacrifice. Foyle nearly always comes down on the side of doing what his job as a policeman requires regardless of the "greater good."
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The spy in "Plan of Attack" is Keppler, the German priest. The British agent at the mapmaking office had even dismissed him as too obvious.
• Hypocrite: Henry Beaumont in "The German Woman": Thanks to his wealth and influence, he is able to game the system and keep his (much younger) German wife from being interned after England and Germany declare war, even if she still has two brothers actively serving in the Nazis' military forces; he declares to Foyle that he loved his wife, knew she wasn't "the enemy" and was willing to break the law for her. Foyle does not say aloud what he said to his own superior earlier: that a man such as Beaumont is used to expecting favors, and would not take the notion of getting into legal trouble over his crimes very seriously. Nor does Foyle remind Beaumont that his own former gardener came begging to him to use the same influence to get the gardener's entirely innocent German uncle out of internment, only for Beaumont to say there was nothing he could do.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Many a culprit will say something along these lines to justify what they did. In many cases they're entirely justified, but had no right to commit the crime nor they had a blanket under the excuse of the war going on, which is the whole purpose of the series.
• I Have No Son!:
  • Subverted: Foyle calls a man locally known as a WWI hero out on getting a magistrate to give his son undeserved conscientious-objector status, and the man tells him how he knew his son was just scared to fight, was disgusted, and in fact went to the magistrate to tell him not to believe him, but was unsuccessful and now considers himself to "have no son". In the end it turns out as Foyle had suspected. The man had bribed Gascoigne to rule in favor of his son's petition. Having lived four years of horrific trench warfare in WWI, only to watch England go to war with Germany again just as his son was old enough to be conscripted, he refused to allow his child to be sent into the same hell that he had to endure.
  • A woman with a German cousin (and spy) assists him in reaching shore by light signals, because he's family. After Foyle reveals this, her husband is so disgusted that he strikes her and declares that while he won't divorce her, he will never acknowledge her existence again—if she says something he will ignore it, if she enters a room he will leave it.
• I Have This Friend: Andrew does this as a way of apologizing to Sam in "All Clear."
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • In "Killing Time," when Sam asks Mrs. Dean if Dean will care for her mixed-race grandchild after Mandy's murder (rather than leave the baby in the city's care), Mrs. Dean does hesitate—then she shuts the door.
  • In "Trespass", Lucas has a moment of regret when his son angrily leaves after Lucas' xenophobic, antisemetic rally results in two elderly immigrants being killed by a Molotov cocktail that Lucas' mob threw, but only a moment before turning back to his plans for the next one.
• Immigrant Patriotism: Carlo Lucciano, an Italian restauranteur and Foyle's old friend, is quite loyal to his adopted country, disgusted with what's going on in his birthplace, and proud of his son for joining the British Army. None of this saves him from the angry mob that attacks his restaurant after Italy declares war on England.
• Incredibly Lame Pun:
  • Milner jokes that a bomb hit a cemetery; there were no deaths but a number of bodies were found.
  • "The Eternity Ring". The fact that it's an incredibly lame pun is actually a plot point, of sorts.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Milner points out to a shopkeeper that he's referring to his employee Matthew in the past tense.
• The Ingenue: Sam Stewart.
• Innocent Innuendo: In "Broken Souls," Brooks asks Sam to dig in her bottom (dresser) drawer for loose change for his football pool. She replies she has no drawers, top or bottom. Then they both burst out giggling.
• Insane Troll Logic: Judge Gascoigne asks a man requesting conscientious objector status if he would (hypothetically) render aid to a child injured by the Blitz. He uses the man's affirmative to deny him CO status because helping victims would technically involve him in the war effort, and so his beliefs are not genuine.
• I Regret Nothing:
  • Judge Belmont admits to having falsified his wife's medical records to exempt her from the internment of Germans and says that he would do it again because he loved her.
  • The culprit of "The Funk Hole" is unrepentant when Foyle confronts him with the murder of Vaudrey, although it is tinged with the bitter acknowledgement of how he has changed.
  • The murderer in "Eagle Day" says he's happy to hang for the first murder because it was an innocent man with the same name—he doesn't consider his killing of Group-Captain Graham to be a crime.
• Ironic Echo: "A Lesson in Murder" ends with Mrs. Gascgoine shouting "You too shall receive justice!" when she shoots her husband for admitting that he had murdered the 11-year-old evacuee staying with them—the fake threat that Judge Gascgoine had created in his plot to lure the boy into a deadly trap.
• Irregular Series: The three series released after the un-cancellation were more noticeably irregular in their release, with gaps of 2-3 years between series.
• It's Personal:
  • The strange death of Milner's war buddy in "Invasion," given that he was the man who carried Milner to safety after Milner's leg was shot off. He was blinded by badly-distilled home whiskey and couldn't escape a fire because of it. When Milner works this out and arrests the pub owner, he has his patrolman leave the room and forces the man to drink a mouthful of the stuff.
  • Averted in "Bad Blood" when Sam contracts anthrax from ill-judged military experiments. When confronting the army scientists responsible, Foyle never says "my driver is sick," but simply says that one woman has died already and another is seriously ill. This doesn't mean he isn't seriously worried about her, however—his moral outrage just wouldn't be less if it was a different person.
• Just Following Orders: In "High Castle," Foyle asks a Nuremburg prosecutor if it's really necessary for them to go on trying industrialists and other civilians who were subordinate to the Nazi high command. In the course of their investigation of the industrialist's death, the prosecutor is able to show him why it is when he takes Foyle to the man's old factory in Monowitz, a "sub-camp" of Auschwitz that was built because so many prisoners were dying on the forced marches from there to the work sites. He spares no detail in describing the hellish conditions that the enslaved prisoners were forced into for the sake of civilian industrialists, who knew exactly what was being done to their "workforce".
• Karma Houdini: Every second murderer or thereabouts.
  • A notable one is the American businessman who Foyle has to let go because he's important to the war effort; Foyle tells him that his fate has only been postponed, because one day the war will be over. The original final episode of the series ended with Foyle embarking on a ship bound for post-war America. When he (and the series) returned in "The Eternity Ring", it's made clear that Karma, in the person of Christopher Foyle, has caught up to the bastard... to the extent that the FBI want a word. MI5 threaten their own pseudo-Karmic retribution — Foyle can work for them, or he can be put on the boat back to America.
  • The murderers in "Casualties of War". Because they are so instrumental to the development of the "bouncing bomb," Foyle is barred from arresting Lydia and Hans for killing Lydia's husband. This, along with the other events of the episode, prompts Foyle to resign at once.
• Kicked Upstairs: Andrew Foyle is promoted to a training position, removing him from the flight roster. This is actually a good thing and done by a group-captain sympathetic to the psychological strain he was enduring.
• Lampshade Hanging: In one episode, Foyle instructs Sam to stay in the car because whenever she doesn't, she gets into trouble.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Foyle's suspect in a murder case turns out to be innocent. The supposed victim, his girlfriend, had realised that he was gay and run off, calling him "sick"... right into a lethal fall down a stairwell.
  • Another glaring example is an army interrogator in "The Cage" who unwittingly kills the only doctor that could cure him from a deadly tick-transmitted illness endemic to West Berlin, because the doctor could single him out as a commie.
• Lead Police Detective: Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle has a higher rank than usual for the trope, but still gets out and investigates in person, due to the manpower shortage that has resulted from most of the able-bodied young men being shipped off to the War.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: "The White Feather."
• Limited Advancement Opportunities: Foyle makes a few attempts to transfer from the police into the armed services over the course of the series. Inevitably, that week's investigation will either piss off (or implicate) whomever has the authority to bring it about, and he remains in Hastings.
• The Lost Lenore: Along with his late wife, another in Foyle's life was James Devereaux's late mother, the nurse Foyle grew close to in the First World War.
• Lotsa People Try to Dun It: In one episode, the Victim of the Week is left incapacitated but not dead by a blow to the head from one intended killer, then dragged off and drowned by a second, unrelated assailant.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In "Bleak Midwinter," a man is accidentally stabbed while trying to hold back his friend. He simply looks down at the weapon and says "What have you done, you bloody fool?" as he falls to his knees.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Mandy Dean (a white Englishwoman) and Gabe Kelly (a black American soldier) in "Killing Time". Gabe gets beaten up after he and Mandy are seen dancing together.
• Married to the Job: Said word-for-word of Hilda Pierce in "Elise."
• Matchlight Danger Revelation: Foyle and his son take cover during a raid in what turns out to be a fuel dump.
• Mildly Military: A point of contention in "Enemy Fire" between Dr. Jaimeson and the very military Group-Captain Smythe. Smythe takes exception to the lax discipline among the recovering pilots in the burn injuries hospital and complains that they aren't wearing official hospital uniforms. Jaimeson's reply is that he had the uniforms destroyed because men with severe burns to their hands can't do up the ties; the injuries they've suffered are so horrific that keeping their spirits up is essential to recovery, not to mention they've more than earned the consideration.
• Miss Conception:
  • A naive young woman's lover tells her that she won't get pregnant if they have sex standing up. Unsurprisingly, she ends up pregnant, and then throws herself in front of a train, prompting her father to seek revenge by attempting to murder her lover.
  • Another ambitious young woman lures an American soldier into a fling which gets her pregnant; she is then found dead in a party that the American base threw for the locals. Though there is motive from the soldier to terminate the pregnancy and the whole plot revolves around her being pregnant, he was actually intoxicated at the time after consuming an extremely toxic (and also deadly) moonshine that the girl had produced, and her culprit in the moonshining killed her for her refusal to turn off the still.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Sam in "Invasion." As soon as she gets a letter from Andrew saying he's breaking up to date someone at his new base, she accepts the invitation of an American soldier who's been flirting with her. Foyle is quietly but visibly irritated with her until she explains that Andrew gave her the push, and he apologizes for making judgments.
• The Mole: The wartime search for a mole codenamed "Plato" is at the core of "Elise." The real problem was that there never was a mole. Ian Woodhead, the head of SOE, invented the mole in order to keep the other spy organizations unaware that the Germans had successfully infiltrated the network.
• Motor Mouth: It can be something of a challenge getting Sam to stop talking. When they're driven by someone else in one episode, Foyle and Milner remark on how odd the quiet was.
• Must Make Amends: Stephen Beck is racing against the clock to bring down the Walkers before he's sent overseas to raise a German resistance. He holds himself responsible after the spy he planted in their office and later the burglar he sent to their estate are murdered, but feels secure in handing the matter over to Foyle.
• Mr. Exposition: Charlotte in the postwar series never attains a role beyond providing exposition on request.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Dr. Wrenn is absolutely distraught when he finally confesses to murdering Gordon Drake because, as he'd protested before, he's a doctor and therefore dedicated to saving lives. Fortunately, it turns out that he didn't kill Drake by hitting him with a rock—it just left Drake incapacitated enough for someone else to drown him in a horse trough.
  • The killer in "Broken Souls" is horrified with himself not only because he is a doctor and took a life, but because he was witnessed by a traumatized boy whom he'd helped earlier that day.
• Nazi Gold: The gold box in "War Games." It was given to Reginald Walker by the German trade office as a gift for the lovely trade deal they'd struck. It belonged to a Jewish family who were shot by the Nazis; they had used it to hold their prayer book. This fact nullifies Walker's protection from prosecution, and he shoots himself when Foyle leaves.
• Nazi Nobleman: Several upper-class Nazi sympathizers appear; one family has a full-fledged shrine to the Third Reich in the basement of their Big Fancy House.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Unless the detective force is on the ball, hiding your crimes amidst the confusion and general mayhem of war is a no-brainer; motive, method and opportunity all have red herrings in ample supply:
  • In the first episode, "The German Woman", a swastika carved into a tree near the scene of her murder makes for the easy assumption that she was killed by one of the vengeful villagers, instead of trying to prevent her former lover from seducing her stepdaughter for the father's money.
  • Lampshaded by Milner in "Eagle Day", after a body is discovered in the ruins of a bombed-out house:
    Sam: Was it enemy action?
    Milner: Not unless they're dropping kitchen knives. He was stabbed.
• Never One Murder: Usually played straight, but averted in "The Eternity Ring", which rather than a murder mystery has an espionage plot. Not only is there only one murder, but it's a red herring.
• Never Mess with Granny: While never actually beating anyone up himself, whenever someone says something particularly immoral you know that Foyle is about to open a can of verbal whupass on that poor idiot. He also takes out a looting firefighter with one well-placed haymaker in "Fifty Ships".
• Never My Fault: Judge Gascgoine blames his wife Emily for his murder of a child because her stately family house was too expensive to keep up. She responds by taking the revolver from his desk and shooting him. When confessing, she calmly tells Foyle that she didn't do it because she hated him, but because it was the right thing to do.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: When her gig as Foyle's driver ends with his resignation from the force (brief though it is), Sam has to find a new job—and whatever she gets always seems to involve her in the plot and end before the episode does. During the last year of the war she works in a mapmaking facility when one of the cartographers is murdered. Post-war she becomes a domestic assistant to a local artist (who is murdered), then Adam Wainright's partner in his doomed guesthouse for a few episodes, and finally MI-5 strongarm Foyle into joining to clear her name of being a Russian agent, which gets her fired and MI-5 faked the incriminating photo specifically to get Foyle involved. After that, she works as Foyle's assistant in the intelligence office until the end of the series.
• Nice to the Waiter: In "The White Feather", Sir Ernest Bannerman, an MP and one of Guy Spencer's most prominent supporters, exits the hotel after the murder and says since his regular driver is absent, Sam may have the honor of driving him and his wife back to London so he can attend to Parliamentary business. Apologetically, she explains that Foyle hasn't yet authorized them to leave. Bannerman is more incredulous than outraged when he asks if someone as lowly as her (and a woman, no less), is actually refusing his orders; to her own surprise, she says that is exactly what she is doing.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent:
  • Averted in "Fifty Ships." English actor Henry Goodman plays American character Howard Paige and does a pretty decent job with the voice without going too overboard.
  • Halfway in "Killing Time" with Sergeant Calhoun, who is supposed to be Southern but uses a standard-sounding American accent.
• Not Me This Time: In "Killing Time", Sergeant Calhoun is guilty of beating Gabe, graphically threatening Mandy, starting a fight with Black soldiers, cheating a local boxer, threatening Gabe into a false confession, and blackmailing the couple who have been robbing drivers in the woods into mugging the payroll officer. With all this plus local antipathy towards American segregation, Foyle points out that any jury will hang him for Mandy's murder—but that turns out to be the one thing he didn't do and he points Foyle to the real culprit, Wesker.
• Not My Driver: In "High Castle", an assassin takes the place of a cab driver to kill his victim.
• No Sympathy: Jane, Milner's first wife, is horrified and disgusted by his missing leg and refuses to even look at his prosthetic, much less let him talk about how he feels about being an amputee. She leaves for an extended stay with her sister, which eventually becomes a formal separation.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Said word-for-word by two different characters, once as the complete, classic, German-accented "See, ve are not so different, you and I" (although the Nazi in question is not a villain and means it in the sense that he was an ordinary soldier who went where he was told).
• Not What It Looks Like: Mrs. Milner returns home early to find Milner and Sam (staying over because her boarding house was bombed) dancing in the kitchen.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In "The Eternity Ring", Foyle (and the viewer) knows something is up with Sam when she's not hungry.
  • Hilda Pierce breaks down into sobs in "Elise" after she discovers that Woodhead invented Plato.
• One of Our Own: Milner is the chief suspect in the murder of his wife.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Milner has the tendency of behaving like this when he comes in contact with Foyle and Sam after he's put in charge of the Brighton office. He disrespects both of them — and immediately regrets it, but takes his sweet time to apologize due to the case at hand.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Happens a lot in war, and so to more than a few characters. Foyle sometimes gives clues that, underneath his stoic exterior, losing Andrew is his greatest fear.
  Foyle: There was a marriage, a good one, and a beautiful son. My beautiful son is alive - thank God - but I lost my wife.
• Parachute in a Tree:
  • In one episode, a German WWII flier who is found hanging in a tree from his parachute after a plane crash is involved in a murder taking place at the same time. Played with: the soldier did not in fact land with the parachute. He was transported in by a submarine and then hung himself up in the tree to make it look like he had been in the plane.
  • Played with in the same episode, where one of the crew members of the bomber is found exactly at the side of a tree with a parachute that had been tampered with to prevent deployment. Turns out, he grabbed the parachute that the navigator was supposed to take, as the latter wasn't supposed to get out alive should the plane be felled according to Luftwaffe emergency protocol.
• Plucky Girl: Sam.
• Proscenium Reveal: "The French Drop" begins with a prisoner being dragged off and having his head repeatedly shoved in a bathtub by Nazis trying to torture information out of him. After the man is taken back to his cell, the two Nazis go upstairs and begin a conversation in perfect English, revealing that they're British officers training agents to endure torture.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Happened to Andrew Foyle... kind of. He still did voiceovers in letters and such, and appeared for the intended final episode.
  • Milner was Left Off The Bus when the setting changed to London in series 8.
  • Desk Sergeant Rivers was replaced by the young, garrulous Brooks in series 5.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Foyle is a master at these, notably in the episode "Fifty Ships", where he delivers one for the B-plot and one for the A-plot.
• Reverse Psychology: Sam gets some useful information from a waitress in "The White Feather" by making a disparaging remark about boyfriends in general, prompting the waitress to defend her friend's choice and drop his name to prove he wasn't some anonymous fly-by-knight.
• Rewatch Bonus: The identity parade in "Bleak Midwinter." Foyle isn't watching the elderly witness as he walks down the line. He's watching the patrolman who drove him over, after having given the task to that patrolman in the first place.
• Robbing the Dead: The firefighters in "Fifty Ships." Strictly speaking, not everyone they rob is dead, but it's about the same level of loathsome to rob houses that have just been bombed. And the crime carries the death penalty thanks to a recent revision of the law.
• Running Gag:
  • Some episodes have one, mostly involving Sam.
  • Sam gets blown up three times over the course of the series. She immediately lampshades it.
  • In one episode, Sam is made homeless after the place she's staying in is hit by a bomb during a raid. Numerous characters offer to let her briefly stay with him, only telling her not to tell anyone, "especially Foyle", because they don't want it to look improper. Having gone through pretty much main character by the end, she's about to set up camp in a cell when Foyle encounters her ... and promptly offers to let her stay with him, only asking that she doesn't tell anyone so that it doesn't look improper.
  Sam: Quite alright, sir. I've become very good at keeping secrets.
  • There is also a subtle one in the fact that DCS Foyle almost never accepts tea from anyone (at least not from anyone he's investigating). It's shown that Foyle is more partial towards coffee.
• Sadistic Choice: Done by the culprit in "The Funk Hole." He forces his victim to swallow a cyanide pill and says that the other option is to be shot once in each limb and the stomach to die a slow, agonizing death.
• The Scapegoat: Griffiths in "All Clear." He's sent a number of strange messages (a tiger photo on his door, an envelope of sand, ominous phone calls) which all make him very unhappy. He commits suicide and leaves a note saying that "I wasn't responsible." The messages were all from Kiefer, who decided that Griffiths was the reason that Exercise Tiger, at Slapton Sands, was attacked by U-Boats resulting in over 700 deaths. Foyle isn't satisfied and points out several other factors that contributed to the disaster rather than one man's faulty signaling.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In "The German Woman", Foyle swiftly works out that Greta Beaumont nee Hauptmann (who is not only German by birth but has two brothers actively serving in the Nazi military) should have been interned as soon as the British law came into effect, and the committee that classified her as a "refugee from Nazi oppression" and gave her free reign of the English countryside, "must have been blind, idiotic, corrupt, or all three." It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to notice that her English husband is both very wealthy and (as a retired magistrate) very influential.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In "Sunflower", Sir Alec continually reminds Foyle that he's no less happy about MI-5 protecting ex-Nazi Strasser, but Strasser is an excellent information source and they need to keep him out of the Americans' hands for the good of British Intelligence. At the end, it's Valentine who tips off the Americans about the faked death and where to pick Strasser up. Valentine may be a career intelligence agent, but relying on men like Strasser makes them no better than what they're supposedly fighting against.
• Screw the War, We're Partying:
  • One episode features a countryside hotel where people try to pretend the war isn't happening. Such places were called "funk holes" and Foyle describes them as tailored for people with more money than conscience. (Certainly true there, as two of the residents were involved in food racketeering and one was writing sensationalist and fabricated news stories about the Blitz.)
  • Subverted by an instance where a business owner comes to acquire a turkey under shady circumstances to sell it for Christmas. Foyle arrests him and seizes the turkey as evidence. The policemen try to make a banquet out of the seized food until Milner stops them from what would be considered theft. The turkey itself becomes a Running Gag over the episode for the same reason until Foyle decides to be lenient.
• Separated by a Common Language: In "Invasion," there are a few misunderstandings between British and American slang—for instance a soldier asks Foyle why a girl asked him for a "rubber."^note In England: pencil eraser. In America: condom.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • Milner in early episodes, and occasionally Andrew. While he's naturally more stoic about things, Foyle was also a veteran of the First World War, and occasionally finds himself recalling things he'd probably sooner forget.
  • Most of the post-war episodes explore the difficult emotional ramifications when men were returned home from combat, from POW camps, and from injuries, then dropped back into their old lives after several years away. The expectations (from themselves or from their family and friends) to just go back to how things were before the war cause a lot of friction.
• Ship Tease: The final series, in an understated British sort of way, suggests that there might be a future for Foyle and Elizabeth Addis. In the series finale, Foyle learns that she's been reporting on him to MI5, which he might have forgiven in time, and then that she was knowingly complicit in a cover-up that led to the deaths he's investigating, which he's not going to overlook as easily.
• Shown Their Work: Almost every episode is based on a real person, incident, or wartime organization, most notably the episode about the "bouncing bomb." The scripts always incorporate numerous historically accurate details about life on the Home Front and the threat of invasion on the South Coast.
• Significant Name Overlap:
  • Dr. Novak attempts suicide because of "what Worth said." It was not his just-murdered and hated colleague Dr. Worth, however. It was a BBC journalist named Worth, reporting on the horror of the concentration camps, including the one where Novak's family was sent.
  • In "The Cage," there are two Evelyn Greens. One is a Russian agent. Meanwhile, a different Evelyn Green disappears, which is brought to Foyle and Sam's attention because the other Evelyn's mother lives in Adam Wainwright's constituency and asks for his help. The spy Evelyn was tipped off to leave the country by her lover, a mole in British army intelligence, who arranges for the second Evelyn to be detained in her place.
• Sins of the Father: In "The Hide", James Devereaux, the scion from a prominent family, faces conviction and execution for treason for being an Eagle Squadron member. Foyle uncovers that Devereaux, as a child, secretly witnessed his father beat his first wife (James' mother) to death, and the authorities swept the killing under the rug as an accident. So his joining the British Free Corps was an act of rebellion, and although he was a double-agent, being executed for treason was his way to disgrace his family to get back at his father. Faced with these facts, his father does the honorable thing for the first time in his life and confesses everything and is arrested, so that his son's actions become mitigating circumstances and gains a new trial.
• Skewed Priorities: Examined. A running theme throughout the series is Foyle being asked why he's bothering to investigate petty smugglers and lone murders when they're in the biggest war the world has yet seen. But crime doesn't stop just because there's a war on, and often enough it ties directly into some crucial aspect of it. In "Fifty Ships," Foyle expresses his belief that the war begins with people like the one he's arresting at that moment—making the world around them that much worse by their actions on a small scale.
• Spanner in the Works: The children collecting scrap in "War Games" end up recovering the incriminating letter when they sneak onto the Walker estate for the big pile of papers that Simon is burning.
• Start to Corpse: The average episode doesn't feature a murder until (roughly) halfway through. The intervening time usually follows Foyle's investigation into smuggling, fraud, or some other crime related to the war effort.
• Stealing the Credit: In "Fifty Ships," it turns out that Howard Paige patented Richard Hunter's gearbox invention in America and made millions, leaving Hunter broken and poor in England. Then, after Hunter couldn't bring himself to shoot, Page took the gun and killed him.
• Stiff Upper Lip:
  • In droves. Foyle isn't even that fazed at the fact that his son unwittingly led them to take refuge on a fuel deposit and then lit up a match. He proceeds to politely ask him to extinguish the flame.
  • Foyle is remarkably polite and calm for someone as relentless as he is. He has seen people die charred up in explosions in front of him, which only cause him to start asking more questions; curiously, once they're exposed, the culprits never turn violent against him. it is highly implied that Foyle's nerves of steel are the result of his service in the First World War, where death could come without warning and at any time. Nothing Foyle encounters is more nerve wracking than what he must have encountered in the trenches.
  • Whereas any other person would have lost his composure, Milner is remarkably parsimonious (yet visibly upset) about being accused of the murder of his wife. When he finds out that he's been framed by an antagonizing patrolman, he never confronts him and continues pursuing the investigation at hand nevertheless.
• Smug Snake: Colonel Winteringham in "The French Drop" is nowhere as clever as he believes himself to be. He insists Foyle is a dim rural cop who will be easy to mislead and control, was unable to find an interdepartmental spy even though Foyle exposed him with one conversation, and when he sent an agent on a mission with faulty intelligence, covered up the death in a sloppy way that had easily-exposed holes in the story. Hilda Pierce opines that he won't last long in the job.
• The Stoic: Foyle, who is defined almost totally by his self-control. Others too, but Milner for instance has a lapse in "Bleak Midwinter" to show that O.O.C. Is Serious Business, whereas with Foyle there simply never is any OOC.
  • Hilda Pierce in the postwar episodes.
• Straight Gay:
  • Andrew's friend Rex is revealed to be one towards the end of "Among The Few".
  • Arthur Valentine in "The Eternity Ring."
  • Kaplan in "Elise."
• Stranger in a Familiar Land/So What Do We Do Now?
• The Summation: Most episodes feature one, due to the sometimes-convoluted plots, and the unexpected ways that events can intersect and influence each other.
• Survivor Guilt:
  • Andrew is deeply affected by his friend Woods' crash in "Enemy Fire" because Woods was in his plane, flying a mission that would have been Andrew's. Though the crash isn't fatal, Woods is severely burned and Andrew is unsettled by the specialist hospital full of scarred and disfigured airman.
  • Sam has a bit of this in "Fifty Ships" when a housemate of hers is killed going downstairs to the cellar, while Sam herself was still getting out of bed.
  • Dr. Novak, when he hears the news reports from the concentration camps, because he only escaped by the luck of being at a symposium in Paris and unable to return to Poland when the Nazis invaded.
• Taking the Heat:
  • In "Invasion," the farmer walks into the police station to confess Susan's murder because he'd told his nephew that she was cheating on him with an American soldier in the hopes that he'd rough the guy up and is horrified to discover her dead. The nephew sets the story straight, however; he had spent the evening verifiably drinking at a pub. Foyle doesn't press the charge of making a false confession, understanding why the man did it.
• Taking You with Me:
  • In "A War of Nerves," Hammond knows that the Talbots are going to kill him one way or another, as though he won't die anyway from detonating bombs. He arranges to return the money alone. When one of their goons shoots him, he lives long enough to say they should count it—as soon as they open the briefcase it explodes from the UXB he kept and rigged inside. Foyle, Sam, and Milner arrive just in time to witness it.
  • The murderer in "Bleak Midwinter" tries to do this.
  • Hilda Pierce successfully does this to Ian Woodhead and herself in "Elise."
• Team Dad: Less so with Milner (although there's clearly a great deal of mutual respect), but for all his gruffness Foyle clearly comes to view Sam as something of a daughter-he-never-had. Andrew even uses it as a point in favour of his proposal to Sam: that she would love the idea of Foyle as her father-in-law! (She still turns him down.) And an American soldier she dates makes a point of letting Foyle know that his intentions are honorable, to which Foyle replies that her actual father would probably like to know that.

• This Is Unforgivable!: Foyle's previous Number Two, Captain Devlin, is much happier to reunite than Foyle is. Devlin planted evidence at the scene of a burglary because he wanted to guarantee a long conviction. Foyle discovered the fabrication after Devlin joined the Army and withdrew the evidence himself. He calls this unforgivable when he informs Devlin what happened, as the reason for his coolness.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Played straight with some British-born Nazi sympathizers, subverted with a captured German spy of the My Country, Right or Wrong variety. The captured spy actually provides Foyle with useful evidence, entirely voluntarily, because even though they are at War, Murder is still Murder.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Sir Michael Waterford in "Enemy Fire" appears to still be heavily affected by his shellshock from World War I and rarely manages to make eye contact with anyone.
• To Be Lawful or Good: At the end of "High Castle". Knowles, the murdered translator, had been bribed with diamonds taken from concentration camp victims; his dying widow needs the diamonds in order to afford dialysis in America, and begs Foyle to let her keep them. When asked if he let Mrs. Knowles keep the diamonds, Foyle responds, "What would you have done?" End episode.
• Tomboyish Name: Sam.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Captain James Kiefer of the US Army. By the time he becomes a Major, he's so shell-shocked that he even damages his friendship with Foyle.
• Torches and Pitchforks: "A Lesson in Murder" ends with a mob destroying an Italian restaurant and killing the owner in response to the news that Italy has declared war.
• Torture First, Ask Questions Later:
  • Don't force a prisoner to play Russian Roulette unless you know exactly where the bullet is.
  • Foyle also deduces that a prisoner was tortured^note sprayed full-force with a fire hose, specifically from a brief Sherlock Scan of his cell. In that case, nobody involved in the torture actually had any questions they wanted answered — they were just doing it because the prisoner was a Conscientious Objector.
• Tranquil Fury: Foyle's rage is always supremely controlled and collected. He does admit to having "quite enjoyed" punching out a looting firefighter, though.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: Most episodes in the war years have Foyle investigating the central murder(s) while also trying to solve another crime related to the war such as racketeering, looting, or fraud. In the MI-5 series, the secondary plot is typically an aspect of postwar life that Adam Wainwright is dealing with in Parliament.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: More than a few of Foyle's superiors travel this path. One of them does wise up between series and apologizes to Foyle for having been a "Colonel Blimp of the worst sort."
• Wall Bang Her: In "Eagle Day", Lucy Smith's parents relate that Alistair Graham persuaded their daughter to have "relations" with him against a wall, convincing her that having sex standing up would prevent her from getting pregnant. It didn't, and she killed herself in shame.
• Warrior Poet: Andrew writes war poems.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Minister Roper "Sunflower". He had Helliwell's farm evaluation falsified because Helliwell wanted to turn it into a real estate development; Roper wanted to ensure that it would remain farmland given the continuing food shortage in Britain.
• Wham Episode: "The Hide" takes a rather different approach to finishing the series than "All Clear" did. In "The Hide," the big reveal about Foyle is that as a young soldier recovering from a wound, he had a relationship with a married nurse, and the man he's spent the episode saving from being executed for treason is her son. In "All Clear," it was that he can drive.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Andrew's commander gives him a dressing-down for starting a barfight with anti-Irish remarks and points out that while the government might officially be neutral, plenty of Irish individuals volunteered to serve in the British war effort, as both military and civilian workers, and without their help the British would be much worse off.
  • In "All Clear," Andrew returns to Hastings and tells his dad that he intends to get back together with Sam. Foyle's response is a pause, and then a plain "You weren't very kind to her." Sam expresses her opinion much more sharply when he turns up. Specifically, she tells him to check the pamphlet on desertion.
  • A rare one from Sam to Foyle in "The Eternity Ring," after he inadvertently gets her fired while investigating her employer.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: "All Clear", intended to be the final episode, shows the closing of the Hastings police station on V-E Day, and all the main characters moving on. The theme of post-war uncertainty is central to all their stories, while leaving things open enough for a potential return to the series.
• Who Murdered the Asshole: Gordon Drake, the victim in "Enemy Fire." He was having an affair with Dr. Wrenn's wife, and the air raid warden helpfully told Wrenn this. Andrew blamed his deliberately negligent maintenance for Greville Woods' crash. He was blackmailing Waterford. And finally, he squandered his wife's money and abused her. Foyle notes in an interview with one suspect that all of Hastings decided to go and sort him out one way or another on that evening. Wrenn confesses because he hit Drake with a rock, but the air raid warden—his brother-in-law—set him up to be framed so that he could murder Gordon for mistreating his sister and finished the job by drowning him in a trough.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • "A Lesson in Murder". The boy Joe Pearson was the intended target of the grenade all along. Judge Gascoigne was already disgusted with having a lower-class boy running around his house, but decided that killing him was the only way to keep Joe from exposing that Gascoigne had been taking substantial bribes.
  • In "War Games," Reginald Walker orders the dogs to be set on the children who grab the piles of (highly incriminating) papers he's having burnt, and one of them is badly bitten. Mrs. Walker, having already been called a stupid woman by her husband, leaves him for this.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: "Killing Time" features a couple who hang about the woodland roads, with one pretending to be injured so that anyone driving past will stop to help. If they look wealthy, the couple then robs them at gunpoint with the question "did all right in the war, did you?" It turns out to be the husband and wife at Adam's guest house. The husband was badly traumatized after having to mercy kill a fellow soldier in a friendly fire attack and he and his wife were deeply embittered that the rich at home got richer during the war.
• You Just Told Me:
  • In "A War of Nerves," the Talbots first tell Foyle that nothing's been going missing from their factory. After a bomb lands in a warehouse, one of them says that it's a bit silly to investigate their missing supplies in perspective with the war. Foyle reminds them that they'd claimed nothing had gone missing.
  • When a poorly-constructed suitcase bomb fails to go off and is neutralized by the police, Foyle casually brings it back to the man who built it, who panics. Foyle remarks "good, so you know what this is."
• You Meddling Kids: A group of schoolchildren gathering salvage for a school prize manage to collect papers that prove Reginald Walker is secretly trading with the Nazis. He manages to wriggle out of punishment, but Foyle finds another way to get him.
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • The bomb-clearing Engineers in "A War of Nerves." When Hammond started, the average survival rate was seven weeks, and he notes that they found out how German bombs work mostly by being blown up. Which is why he's so fatalistic about stealing from, and then being killed by the Talbots—it was liable to occur through the normal course of his duties anyway.
  • The culprit in "The Cage." The infected tick bite he picked up in East Germany gave him a rare form of encephalitis, so he's ill and shaky when his boss and Foyle confront him. Having been exposed as a mole and facing an agonizing decline over the next several days, he elects to shoot himself.

Subverts or averts:

• Always Murder: Averted in "The French Drop". There's also an odd subversion in "The Eternity Ring" in which there is a murder, but in plot terms it's almost completely irrelevant.
• Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Sam and Andrew agree to be friends and see where things go post-war. She ends up marrying Adam.
• Defective Detective: Foyle is often one of the most well-adjusted people around.
  • Milner is a bit closer to this trope, at least initially — you don't get your leg shot off without coming away with some issues, and he and his wife have problems in their marriage beyond the difficulties that this generates — but he still manages to come to terms with it all remarkably well.
  • DCS David Fielding is an example of a policeman with a path similar to Foyle's, but whose experiences have led him to become burned out and caused him to lose the desire to investigate.
  • DCS Meredith is a subversion, as he was appointed to the Hastings office merely by his reputation alone as an excellent detective even though he shows the opposite when he is there as he is unable/unwilling to pursue investigations due to the overwhelming grief caused by the death of his two sons.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap/Handicapped Badass: Notably subverts both tropes to an interesting and believable effect! Milner's handicap means he sometimes can't always give chase to a fleeing perp and he takes a beating more than once; but he's also a way-more-than-competent detective in other respects.
• False Roulette: A bad guy tries it, but it doesn't work out the way he expected.
• Nostalgia Ain't Like It Used to Be

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