‘Home Fires’ episode 4 review: A Jack – Kate shocker changes tone of everything

ITV’s “Home Fires” has delivered now on four episodes that have focused on a variety of different struggles, whether you are referencing something such as men departing for war or how to keep businesses afloat.

Given the scope of this show at times, it was somewhat of a surprise to us that one of the most emotional stories of the entire night to us tied into something as simple as illiteracy. Steph was struggling due to not being able to understand reading and writing. It’s understandable to feel threatened or even potentially ashamed, but what happens when this starts to threaten the success of the surrounding farm?

We actually suspected that we would be spending much of the article today talking about the struggles of swallowing one’s pride, but instead we had a massive curveball thrown at us in the closing minutes: Jack is dead, supposedly due to a training exercise. It is the sort of news that you really should have seen coming, given that the story really laid at one point the future plans on thick and it was more obviously bad than whatever the contents of Bob’s tonic were.

This death changes things significantly for Kate, given that it felt as though everything on this series, at least to a certain extent, was working out. This turns things on a dime, especially given that there are only two more episodes to deal with the aftermath.

The show itself remains enjoyable, albeit for the most part still very slow-moving. We feel like this series is almost more of a snapshot of life than something that is an extremely in-depth look at every individual character … or at least we did until the end tonight. This is the biggest move “Home Fires” has made to date, and we applaud them for the courage. Grade: B+.

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