Masterpiece Mystery (TV Series) Foyle's War, Series VI: The Russian House (2010) User Reviews

An Entertaining Post WW II History Mystery

[juliewriter · 8/10 · 11 May 2013]

The Russian House is the first Foyle's War episode my husband and I have seen and enjoyed. Unfortunately, we missed all of these well developed history mystery stories when they were on Masterpiece Theater. This particularly well acted story takes place at the end of World War II, when surviving prisoners of war (POWs) were in the process of being exchanged. It turned out, the captured Russians who had fought with the Germans, in reality, were sent back to Odessa where the dictator Stalin had them executed, as traitors. Obviously, the Russian POWs were desperate to escape their deportation, preferring, instead, to hide in England. Michael Kitchen as Foyle, the master police inspector of Hastings, England, is an absolutely superb and intellectual sleuth. His low key investigative intuition portrays the subtle charm of a psychic with the patience of a scientist. In The Russian House story, it's Foyle's job to figures out how one desperate Russian POW was caught in a vice of deception by his own countrymen. A murder of a local artist is blamed on the POW, although it's not really clear why the victim was sympathetic to the accused murderer. This interesting mystery series leaves the viewer with a thirst for knowledge about the politics of post WWII Europe, a time when the world was experiencing a deceptive euphoria about peace before the advent of the Cold War. All three of the Series 6 Foyle's War episodes are excellent, with The Russian House being the first in the entertaining trilogy. The Russian House is educational, with terrific period sets and well acted by Kitchen with the cast.