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Foyle's War: War Games (2003)
Foyle's whiff
An episode on the problem of ferreting out covert companies trading with The enemies of the Allies during the war would have been intriguing.
Unfortunately, this one depends on a series of absurdities that would have embarrassed a Victorian melodramatist.
Among them, a German lawyer somehow practicing in an English court in 1940 without anyone raising an eyebrow. Even a "good German" would not have been doing so in the midst of hostilities. Another, the fanatical English son responsible for the murder was also somehow responsible for the denunciation that forced said jurist to flee...but if he had been in opposition to the regime, he already would have been known by the police, and wouldn't have been the subject of a denunciation. And then they somehow wind up in the same orbit over in England.
The denouement is singularly silly since it requires that audience to believe that in autumn 1940, the English had a list of Jewish prisoners rounded up on the Continent along with an inventory of goods expropriated, which would be necessary for Foyle to explain how incriminating the silver box was. Of course, such tracking was only possible long after the war, unless the Nazis were so nice and thorough that they provided British spies with such inventories of persons & their stolen possessions.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when the writers forget that the story itself is dramatic enough and doesn't require their chest-thumping & music hall villains.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Our Man Bashir (1995)
The joy and playfulness of TOS
DS9 is the one Trek spin-off that wholly captures the spirit of the parent series. TNG would occasionally get it right, but only DS9 gets the mix of opposition and friendship between the characters was perfect, and was never more delightful in this ep that gives us Nana Visitor as a sexpot KGB colonel, a Garak envious of the Bondian excesses of MI-6 agent Bashir ("It appears I joined the wrong intelligence service"), eye-patched O'Brien, and a Sisko/Dr. Noah who fits nicely n the mold of Dr. No, Blofeld, and Goldfinger, and white-jacketed cigar aficionado Worf/ Duchamps...Only DS9 ever got away with the alternating great tragedies ("Duet"), an elegiac original tale of the time-lost in "The Visitor", the pure silliness of "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", and brilliant tribute episodes.like "Trials and Tribble-ations..." , all with the spiritedness of the original,. And "Our Man Bashir" by using the 1964 super spy template, we also get the '60s naughtiness without which TOS would have been a long-forgotten dud.
This one goes to eleven.
The Crown: 48:1 (2020)
Absurd acting, ridiculous writing
Queen Elizabeth would never say anything like "Isn't that what I am? A tribal leader in eccentric costumes?"
And of course the portrayal of Thatcher as a gasping octagenarian who never speaks in any natural cadences continues.
And of course the fact that the countries Mrs Thatcher mentions did and continue to have deadly human rights records - much less of course the mass murder of South African farmers in the present as a sequel to the events - are not even remotely in view of the shabby propagandists posing as screenwriters.
The Crown: Fagan (2020)
Could have been interesting, wasn't
Gillian Anderson and the director seem to think Mrs Thatcher was an octogenarian stroke victim.
They might have mentioned in the end credits that Mr Fagan, a wannabe revolutionary at the time, was later convicted for assaulting a policeman and 14 years after spent four years behind bars for selling heroin. Would have punctured the picture of the normal young guy ruined by being abandoned by the nanny state. Perhaps this is what entertainment industry types think of as a normal person.