After the series was initially cancelled. A new broom in ITV meant that Foyle returned.
In this opener. Foyle has resigned from the police force but is still temporary in charge in Hastings which has a swanky new police station.
The war in Europe is over. The opening scenes has two captured POWs escaping and running away. One gets away, the other jumps from a bridge. The British soldiers plead with him that he is being sent home, the war is over.
These POWs were Russians who were fighting for the Germans. An old commanding officer of Foyle, Brigadier Timothy Wilson calls on him about the escaped Russian.
Foyle learns that these Russians await a fate worse than death if returned to Stalin's Russia.
Sam is meanwhile working for a celebrated artist who is found dead. DI Milner now in Brighton is in charge of the case. It brings Milner into conflict with Foyle who wanted to talk to the artist over the matter relating to the escaped Russian prisoner. The artist had a gardener who is a Russian POW. The artist was also estranged from his son who is a Labour candidate at the general election.
Writer Anthony Horowitz always used the Foyle mysteries to examine several issues. Here it is the fate of returning British soldiers who find that their old jobs are no longer available. The seeds of the new cold war with Stalin's Russia who is showing little mercy to Russian who sided with the Germans. The British authorities who knew of this and still sent back the Russians. There is a bluff and sinister turn from Tim Pigott Smith as Brigadier Wilson.
The murder mystery took a back seat here and the resolution just felt slightly random. Given that Milner, Sam and Foyle were together at the christening of Milner's baby. I disliked that later Milner is distant and rude when Foyle turns up at the scene of the crime. Milner is also rather harsh with Sam who found the body. It just did not sit right.