24 & Foyles War

This column was first printed in the Age on November 23, 2002

24 is a series that has never lost its sparkle for me - but then I have had the privilege of watching it several episodes at a time, and without ads. This is, I suspect is how many people will be watching the series, if they have been diligent about taping is at it goes along. If this is the case, and you don't want to know how it ends, don't read any further.

For those who saw '10pm-11.00pm' last Monday (8.30p.m Channel 7), and plan to watch Monday night's final episode, there is a combination of thrills and disappointment. When we finally realise who the double agent in the CTU is, we know that Jack's sense of betrayal will be acute. Not to mention mine. I had - I kid you not - actually taken a photo of Nina Meyers (Sarah Lively) to my hairdresser and asked him to give me a haircut just like hers. So I supposed I left myself open to the jibe, 'well where does that leave your haircut?' in the seconds before 11pm when we realise the woman with the silly eastern European accent (read: bad guy) is Nina. There are more moments of genuine high drama to come in the last episode, so let me just say this: being a wife becomes an increasingly hapless gig as the clock ticks closer to 12.00am.

On the one hand the revelations are surprising, but on the other the series has created a scenario in which anything was going to be possible. That is, we grew to expect the unexpected, and learnt how to read the twists and turns that become inevitable each episode. How to retain any genuine sense of surprise or outrage? That will be the challenge for the next series of 24 which is also to be set in real time, a year after the events of this series.

Being forced to battle the enemy within is also a theme in the terrific ABC series, Foyle's War (Friday nights, 8.30pm) that has been running for 3 weeks, and ends next Friday (though it seems likely to return in the not too distant future). For all its occasional lapses into predictable plotting and a certain lack of pace, the series is a wonderful examination of what people do to each other when there threat of war is looming, a war which ordinary people and governments use to justify escalating abuses of human rights. Foyle is played with beautiful restraint by Michael Kitchen. His sidekicks are also well played: a one-legged former soldier, Paul Milner (Anthony Howell) and his jolly-hockey-sticks-driver Sam Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks) with whom you suspect everyone is a bit in love with.

Foyle is a widower, with a son in the RAAF, and would like to do his bit for the war. Instead he is forced to see it out as a Detective Chief Superintendent in a quaint and pretty South English village. He quickly realises that the Germans are not the only problems facing society, as his small town threatens to be torn asunder by English fascists, anti-Semites and a wave of increasingly violent racism that sees the local Italian restaurant being burnt to the ground. This against a backdrop of the internment of Germans who had lived happily among their Sth English neighbours for many years.

While it is good entertainment, the ethical dilemmas posed by Foyle's War are unnervingly close to home. It's a show that reminds us of the importance of history. Yet another plea, if you like, that we have much learn from our mistakes, but this can only happen if we force ourselves to remember what has gone before.

Permanent Link for this Article