A few years ago, I had an instructive conversation with an English friend who had just retired after reaching a very high level in the British administrative service. Always curious about lives in galaxies other than mine, I was very interested in his working day, how he dealt with ministers to whom he had to play the bureaucratic minder, how he handled the executing of policies that he strongly disagreed with and so on. One evening, the conversation moved to how one fellow, high-level bureaucrat had managed to torpedo his own career by taking a ‘freebie’. As my friend explained it, this man had flown on government business to a far part of the world, somewhere sunny and warm and surrounded by a balmy sea. The trip was officially paid for by the host government, which was working in partnership with the United Kingdom. After completing his mission, the bureaucrat had taken a few days of leave to holiday in this tropical paradise before flying back to Britain. This had cost him his job and brought shame upon him.

When I heard this, I was somewhat perplexed. “Was he not due leave?” I asked. “Oh no, that wasn’t the problem.” “So the host government paid for his holiday?” “No, no, he paid for that himself.” “Err... then what was the problem, exactly?” “The problem was he piggybacked on the official air-ticket. He finished his work and went on leave. Then he flew back on his official ticket.” I started laughing. “Wait, let me get this straight. This man goes and does his job. Then he takes leave that is due to him. Then he flies back at no extra cost to the exchequer. What’s the problem?” “He used the official air-ticket for his own gain. If he wanted a holiday in ___, he should have come back to London and flown out again on his own money.” I lay out the repetitions because as an Indian, it took me a while to get it. My friend also started to laugh as he observed my perplexity. “I take it in India this would not be a problem?” “Given the levels of ‘piggybacking’ our bureaucrats routinely manage, this wouldn’t even register as a blip.”

I was reminded of this exchange while recently binge-watching the British TV series, Foyle’s War. Set in the years between 1940-46, written by Anthony Horowitz and performed by a star cast, the series is perfect for those of us who are addicted to a kind of Second World War nostalgia without ever having lived in that time or in any of the war theatres. Unlike many films and series about the British in the war years — filmed narratives which can be simultaneously overly rose-tinted and blood-smeared — Foyle’s War uses the tropes of Little England — ‘the green and sceptered isle’, ‘plucky, embattled Britain’ aka the David versus the Nazi Goliath — and often darkens and turns them against previous model-narratives of the Second World War. And, yet, the series is a kind of shameless love affair with an England which — if it ever existed — slipped out long ago from the bomb-bay of history.

Deputy Chief Superintendent Foyle (Michael Kitchen) is a police officer based in the town of Hastings on the southeastern coast of England. Despite being a small town surrounded by the bucolic Sussex countryside, Hastings (and the said countryside) are a hotbed of all sorts of serious crime, both related and unrelated to the ongoing war. Foyle is a likeable character — quiet, understated, unfailingly kind (except to villains), but super sharp and nobody’s fool. He’s also upstanding and incorruptible in an undemonstrative, completely un-pompous, way. Doing his job in war-time Britain regularly brings him into conflict with civil and military authorities, local aristocrats and grandees and not least his own superiors and, yet, Foyle remains more or less polite, soft-spoken and completely unbending.

Beautifully played by Michael Kitchen, this unusual combination of unrelenting toughness well-hidden behind the most civil of demeanours powers the character-engines of the series. For instance, Foyle often avoids mentioning his rank when introducing himself — “I’m a police officer and I’m here to investigate the murder of...” The idea clearly being that identifying oneself simply as a police officer should be enough to gain the complete attention of whoever is being spoken to. He almost never raises his voice or uses threats. If a threat is strategically deployed, it is delivered in an even voice, laid out as a rational and inevitable outcome of things should the threatenee continue with their unfortunate obstreperousness. Most often, the cosh that Foyle uses to brain his targets is one of irrefutable logic and knowledge gained from masterful sleuthing.

In what I’ve watched so far, Foyle has confronted his Commissioner boss at Scotland Yard and told him where he gets off; ruthlessly investigated his own son as well his trusted sergeant for two different murders; resisted illegal, ‘dark State’ demands from the nascent MI5 and the Special Operations Executive; kept powerfully connected aristocrats under investigative house arrest for days; fought off compromises demanded in exchange for a high-powered War Office job that he desperately wants. Now anyone knowing a basic history of the corruption and the brutality of the British police would see that if a character such as Foyle ever existed, he would have been one of the rare exceptions to the rule. And, yet, notions of rule of law are so deeply hard-wired into the British mind that he doesn’t seem entirely fanciful or unbelievable. For instance, it is these bedrock ideas of ‘fair play’ and equality that get a prime minister investigated by the police and into trouble with his own party for carousing while the nation is in lockdown.

Watching the series, I find myself conducting a parallel storyline, imagining a desi version of DCS Foyle in today’s India, a police officer reasonably high up in the chain of command, say somewhere in UP, Bihar or Haryana, acting honourably and fearlessly, putting senior officials and local political satraps behind bars without hesitation, demanding and getting the same abhorrence for corruption from his subordinates and colleagues, and despite all this managing to keep his job and keep delivering without being transferred or put in jail himself on some false charge. So ridiculous and far-fetched does this narrative become that I find my stomach hurting with laughter.