What is it about the Second World War? As a crime writer, it’s often struck me as odd that although most people would be disgusted by a real murder – if it were to take place outside their house – murder stories provide some of the most popular entertainment on TV. The same is true of the Second World War, nobody would find anything remotely entertaining in what is happening in Gaza or Ukraine right now. And the First World War is a litany of horrors…Ypres, Passchendaele and the Somme are scorched into our consciousness.

But for some reason, we can look back on 1940-45 with something of a smile and a sense of nostalgia. More than 50 million people died but more often than not, TV, film and theatre present the Second World War in an altogether softer light. Think of the Ealing comedies made just after the war. Passport to Pimlico starts with an unexploded bomb going off. Whisky Galore!, set during the conflict, has the wily inhabitants of a Hebridean island concealing shipwrecked whisky.

The writers I was brought up on, from Eric Ambler to Alistair Maclean, turned the fight against Nazism into a glorified adventure. In 1987, the great John Boorman directed Hope and Glory, a comedy drama which follows a young boy who discovers that there’s no better time to be alive – particularly when Hitler bombs your school. A similar point of view was taken only last year by Steve McQueen’s Blitz, a generally rosy view of wartime through the eyes of a child.

And you might say this trend has been taken to new extremes by Operation Mincemeat, a comedy musical which has been a huge hit in the West End. Although occasionally poignant, it turns a true secret operation into a barrel of laughs. I myself am no stranger to all this, having written around 30 episodes of Foyle’s War, which ran from 2002-2015. In many ways it was a serious show. What first inspired me was the idea of solving murders at a time when murder has become devalued.

Who cares about the duchess in the library with a dagger in her back when just 50 miles away across the Channel hundreds of people are being killed every day? We incorporated true stories of the war, including the massacre at Slapton Sands, the bombing of Sandhurst Road School (where 38 children were killed) and Dunkirk. In one episode, we built a section of a concentration camp. But even while I was writing the scripts, I couldn’t escape the warmth and fellowship of the period, the sense that the whole thing had been, despite everything, a good time to be alive.

This may have been thanks to my nanny, Norah FitzGerald, who had served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and who, when I was eight years old, regaled me with stories of parties, escapades, unruliness, alcohol and high jinks which she didn’t define but remembered with a glint in her eye.

Fitzy – as we called her – had lost her fiancé in the Battle of Britain, which was how she ended up becoming a nanny, but she never seemed downhearted. She became the model for Sam Stewart, Foyle’s driver in the series, brilliantly played by Honeysuckle Weeks.

Sam was always optimistic and smiling. I can still hear her telling Foyle that she needs time off because she is “PWP” – “pregnant without permission”. It was moments like that, I think, that resonated with our audience. Not the murders. And never the horrors of the war itself. The same may be true of other wartime TV dramas and films.

I enjoyed the mini-series, Masters of the Air, on Apple. Backed by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, it came from the same stable as Band of Brothers and Pacific, and its budget allowed for breathtaking aerial sequences, a handsome cast and production values we could never have afforded on Foyle.

What I most remember, though, are the dance sequences and the banter between the two main protagonists, Bucky and Buck – even the names give you an idea of what was going on here. I was never quite persuaded that Masters of the Air was, at heart, a show about killing people. But perhaps that’s exactly what the genre is all about. War is bad. War is horrible. But it’s often when the world is at its worst that we can find the best in ourselves. I always used to think that the three searchlights in the credit sequence of Foyle’s War represented our three main characters; Foyle, Sam and Milner. They were the lights in the darkness and although the junior police officer, Milner, drifted away, Foyle and Sam stayed together until the end.

There are two other things about the Second World War that make it so compelling to a modern audience in the UK. The first, obviously, is that, against all the odds we won. It’s now 80 years since VE Day, and recent polls have found many of the so-called Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) believe the UK to be a racist country and wouldn’t fight for it. That’s pretty bleak – but then almost every news story describes a country diminished since Brexit, still at war with itself, very much a hostage to fortune in increasingly dark and tempestuous times.

If you want to write a drama that makes people feel good about themselves, is there any wonder that 1940-1945 should be your first port of call? The Second World War is also the only major conflict that can be seen in the simplest terms.

There is no question at all that the Nazis were evil. It’s good vs evil, black vs white – exactly the same basic principles that inform huge shows like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. In an uncertain world, Second World War drama provides moral absolutes and a happy ending. Put simply, what’s not to like?

Anthony Horowitz’s latest novel, Marble Hall Murders (Cornerstone, £22) is out now