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Foyle's War: High Castle (2015)
A very weak entry of the series.
High Castle is the first episode of the eighth series of "Foyle's War", and in my opinion it has to be one of the weakest entries of the whole series for many reasons. First of all, the murder mystery itself is way too straightforward comparing to others. The identity of the murderer is quite obvious from the start, the motive could also be figured out near half way through the episode, which is rare for a quality series like Foyle. Secondly, the conclusion is far from satisfying. There are many loose ends untied, most notable being that we never find out exactly how Clayton Del Mar managed to murder Herman Linz, did he pay someone to do it or else? This is a huge plot hole in my opinion. Also at the end of the episode, the Soviet agent just murders Clayton Del Mar and runs away. We never find out if he's been caught or not, which makes me feel rather dissatisfied. Thirdly, the subplot about Vera Stephens's job goes nowhere and never resolves. She just disappears after creating a huge misunderstanding between Sam and Adam, I wonder if that's her sole purpose for being in this episode. No idea if Mr Horowitz's original script was like that or something happened during the production process, but overall it's very unsatisfying, the mystery is too simple and the conclusion is quite unsatisfying. It just feels unfinished due to all the loose ends left there.
Marple (2004)
A very worthy series despite being controversial.
As many negative reviews as this series has received for taking too much liberty of Dame Agatha Christie's original work, I must admit that I find it quite enjoyable to watch. I personally don't mind it changed some of Dame Agatha's below-average original novels, and find a few of these adaptions quite interesting and even can be said as an improvement of to the original, especially for her late work such as At Bertram's Hotel, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Nemesis and so on. The only one in my opinion goes way too far is Murder Is Easy. The incest element in this story could have made a decent episode of Midsomer Murders, but it's never for Agatha Christie adaptions and never will be! As for the cast, I like the portray of both McEwan and McKenzie, but find the two actresses too much of a contrary to each other, especially for the same character in a consecutive TV series. As for regular writers, Kevin Elyot's scripts are always relatively faithful ones, but sometimes it makes the film feel rather dull, most notably being A Pocket Full of Rye. Stewart Harcourt could always do some interesting changes while keeping the core of the original stories, I like most of his work except for Ordeal By Innocence. Paul Rutman wrote two episodes with quite different styles: They Do It with Mirrors is a rather faithful adaption to the original story, while The Secret of Chimneys is a total rewrite! As for Stephen Churchett, he's the one that brings many of his own ideas to the source material, sometimes they work to me, such as Nemesis and The Sittaford Mystery, and sometimes they don't, most notably being Sleeping Murder and, of course, Murder Is Easy, due to their incest themes. But dare I say that as many people might criticize this series for its "reinventing" attempts, I still praise ITV's courage of trying to seek a new way to make Christie's work being accepted to the audience, despite the controversial feed backs.