The Hide

by Courtney Hilden
Spoiler Alert: This review gives away part of the mystery, though thankfully, not all the ending.

"The Hide," an episode of Foyle's War, follows Foyle, newly retired and about to leave for America, and Sidekick Sam and her new beau Adam at their boardinghouse on the green. This time around, Foyle is investigating a young man named Devereaux who has been accused of siding with the Nazis while a British P.O.W. during the recently ended Second World War. The suspect admits to being a member of the British Free Corps, a group the Nazis formed of P.O.W.'s by tempting them with better food and freedom. (Historically, this is an actual group. In a small moment in Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim is asked to join the American Free Corps, a similar division.) Foyle suspects that there are other forces afoot, and begins investigating, coming upon a young woman brutally murdered, a mother who died when the suspect was young, and the British secret service. Meanwhile, Sidekick Sam and her boytoy Adam attempt to persuade the town not to sell the green to a fast-talking opportunist. Here, it's historically accurate as well, since medieval European villages almost always had town greens, which is where the locals were allowed to let their animals graze, just as the episode explains.
The easiest way to judge how good a mystery is to see how quickly you can guess the answer. It seemed obvious from the beginning that the first Mrs. Devereaux had been murdered by her husband, since it's rare that anyone would be gouged out by a deer. I've been around deer my whole life, and they'd never dare let a human get that close to them, and certainly not to the point where they would feel threatened enough. They're deer, not wildebeests. Otherwise, the episode has a few twists and one devastating surprise at the end, making it a decent last romp.
It's too bad this is the last episode of Foyle's War, since these mysteries are engaging and interesting in that they shed light on lesser-known aspects of the Second World War and criticize the Allied idealized vision of the new Western society they have created. It would be nice if we could continue following Sidekick Sam, who was always the most fascinating character within the series anyway.