It's case closed for 2 BBC detective dramas

How do you like your British detectives?

Dry-witted and diffident, with an upper lip as stiff as they come?

Or rich, impassioned and sometimes reckless, wearing heart-on-sleeve?

Fans of the PBS series "Mystery!" have had the benefit of both sorts during the reigns of two quintessential, long-running, BBC detective sagas, which both take their final bows on American TV this summer.

"Foyle's War" recently tied up its fifth multiepisode series focused on Inspector Christopher Foyle, a taciturn copper who staunchly maintains the peace in a seaside Sussex town throughout World War II.

And tonight, local PBS stations will air the finale of "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries," a seven-season hit with a more contemporary London backdrop, based on characters culled from the popular mystery novels of Whidbey Island resident Elizabeth George (an American author with a great flair for British whodunits).

Both shows could probably continue on, to the delight of their devoted fans. But the BBC often wisely makes a point of retiring series before they go stale. And for the uninitiated, or those who want to relieve the adventures of these compelling sleuths, boxed DVD editions of both series offer consolation.

What's serendipitous about the expiration dates of the shows is the neat contrast it allows us to make between their respective gumshoe heroes.

Though Foyle has many moments of ambivalence and frustration in Michael Kitchen's attractively minimalist portrayal, he exudes a terse integrity that sums up Britain's national identity during the war.

An unassuming widower with a dashing RAF pilot son, Foyle untangles crimes revealing the less admirable behavior of people in wartime — espionage, smuggling, black marketeering and other forms of treachery.

Foyle's high moral stature is never in doubt, though he wrangles with higher-ups and wishes he were on the front lines. His understated but strong support for his delightfully gawky female driver (played by Honeysuckle Weeks) and his war-wounded sidekick (Anthony Howell) isn't much in question either.

But beyond valorizing Foyle, series creator-writer Anthony Horowitz used scrupulous historical research to accurately evoke the deprivations, loss of life and psychic trauma endured by Britons during a war that seemed unwinnable at first.

Even the series' final episode — which aired last month — speaks to lingering damage from the Blitz (Nazi air bombardment of England) and the Continental trenches, that would take generations to heal.

An entirely different sort of England is the province of Inspector Thomas Lynley, played by the intense, handsome Nathaniel Parker. Ironically, Weeks of "Foyle's War" appears on the final episode of "Lynley," airing at 9 tonight on KCTS-TV.

An aristocrat who tracks down suspects by tooling around in his posh car (a Bristol 410), Lynley is a stand-up guy who struggles with a tempestuous personal life, and with the class and multicultural tension he can't evade in modern, urban Britain.

The focal point of those class skirmishes is Lynley's professional partnership with policewoman Barbara Havers (Sharon Small). A feisty daughter of the working class who has battled snobbery and sexism to rise (and fall) in the ranks, Havers can be prickly and impetuous.

The way she and Lynley negotiate their relationship, including the unspoken sexual attraction that flickers between them, are the heartbeat of the show.

But so are the moral ambiguities of policing in a society with such deep social and ethnic divisions, but new openness to change and inclusion. It's an England that Foyle could not have imagined from his seaside outpost a half-century earlier.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com