Quite by chance last night, I stumbled across the French police drama series “Engrenages” (known as “Spiral” in English) on the BBC’s iPlayer. The series (in it’s third season) is currently being shown on BBC4.
To be brutally honest, I generally don’t watch French films or TV shows – not because I’m averse to reading subtitles, nor because of any feelings towards or about the French (for the record, I like them) – but because by and large, I find a lot of their televisual output rather dull.
It is a testament to the writing, acting and directing of Spiral then, that I not only sat riveted to the episode being shown, but stayed to watch a second hour of it, that followed immediately afterwards. Bearing in mind that I was watching episodes seven and eight (of twelve), it goes to show just how engaging the programme is, that having missed the first half of the story, I still got sucked into it.
You can read more details about the plot via the Wiki link above. Suffice it to say that police dramas don’t get much more gritty than this. It made Prime Suspect look like an episode of Hart to Hart by comparison.
There was violence, both seen and implied, there was gore, and there was a lot of sex – and that was just the police in their off-duty hours. And duplicity? Dear God, if that ever becomes an Olympic sport, the French officials (both police and judiciary) will win gold.
It was the unending twists of double-crosses and corruption that add to both the tension and the attraction to what is already a superb storyline. Police sleeping with each other, telling tales and playing politics, judges being bribed, court officials being blackmailed, the list goes on – and this was just in the first 45 mins I’d seen!
All of which takes place whilst they’re trying to solve a murder and catch a possible serial killer, who in turn seems to be mixed up with eastern European people trafficking and prosititution. Oh, and then there’s the strange tramp bloke called Jesus who the killer brings in to cut up this victim. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I check every jam jar very carefully when I visit peoples’ kitchens now.
People bang on endlessly about US television crime dramas such as the CSI franchises, but they pale into insignificance next to Spiral. Obviously an American show would never have the balls to show the amount of sex and gore that this show does, nor I suspect would they linger on the corruption of state officials as much but if American TV networks could learn anything from Spiral it would be to pick the pace up.
Much as I love America (for all its many faults) it’s crime drama and sci-fi shows are over-sanitised leaden snore-fests compared to British and French shows. Spiral is perfectly paced. The story moves quickly, but slows now and again in order to let the audience catch its breath.
All the main characters were well-played, and It’s hard to pick out anyone for special praise, but if I had to, it’d be Caroline Proust as Capt. Laure Berthaud, who manages to be a hard-nosed-but-deeply-flawed copper, but also quite sexy when she lets her guard down, and Thierry Godard as her Lieutenant “Gilou”. Superb chemistry between them that made me think they had been a couple in previous episodes, but reading up on the show, it seems not.
I’m no expert TV critic, as you can see by reading this, and I’m being brief in the hope that I’ll actually finish this and get it posted rather than leave it incomplete and unpublished. The bottom line is, if you can handle subtitles, and you like your crime drama gritty and tension-packed, get yourself over to BBC4 on Saturday night (repeated Thursdays).
