Proof that now even the French make better whodunits than us
For the first time in my life on a family holiday, I didn’t send any postcards this year. I bought them. I wrote them. But I didn’t send them, because apparently it is no longer possible to buy a book of stamps in France.
You may think it’s hard to find a post office in this country these days. Across the Channel it is well-nigh impossible, and all my pleading for stamps in grocery shops and tobacconists was met with that blank, unsmiling face the French do so well — the one that silently says: ‘ Mon Dieu, don’t I just hate the English.’
The disintegration of their postal service could explain the plot of
Witnesses (C4), in which a Normandy psychopath robs graves to send a message to police.
That does seem a bit extreme. Surely he could have texted, or dropped off a note by hand.
Instead, in the dead of night, he poses exhumed corpses in family scenes at empty show homes, and adds clues to attract the attention of one veteran detective in particular — the widowed Paul Maisonneuve (Thierry Lhermitte).
Lhermitte, 62, is a popular comedian who founded a theatre troupe with a bunch of schoolfriends in the mid-Seventies and went on to earn a knighthood in the Legion d’Honneur. He’s the closest thing France has to Sir David Jason, but he isn’t playing Maisonneuve for laughs.
The detective walks with a stick following a car crash that was probably a suicide attempt. He never smiles and he never gives praise — but his colleagues are in awe of him. All except one: a stroppy young investigator with an authority problem, Sandra Winckler (Marie Dompnier).
Don’t tell the French, because it will only make them even more bigheaded, but their TV writers are streets ahead of the Brits with police dramas. The best known is Spiral, the brutally graphic crime series set in Paris and starring Caroline Proust as, once again, a stroppy young investigator with an authority problem.
Witnesses is less gruesome than Spiral, which generally resembles the aftermath of an explosion in a mortuary. It is also less confusing: characters spell out what they know about each other.
‘Paul,’ said the police chief to Maisonneuve, ‘your car crash was eight months after your wife died. You have been in a rehabilitation centre for two years.’ Lhermitte nodded gravely, as if grateful for the reminder.
It’s not subtle, but it is helpful, especially if you’re relying on the subtitles to follow the dialogue.
Someone at C4 must be a big fan of French TV, because they have a knack for buying in the best.
The last one was The returned, which looked pallid and ravishing, and Witnesses is equally beautiful to watch. The camera swoops over the seaside town of Le Treport, making superb use of its scenery, such as the cliff-face funicular railway.
There’s an otherworldly hint of fairy tales, too, with a mysterious girl in a red hood, and wolves that appear in dreams. Nothing about the new series of
Wentworth Prison (C5) is otherworldly or subtle. This Australian show is as camp as Graham Norton in a feather boa, dancing to Abba with the England ladies’ football team.
Wentworth Prison a remake of Eighties soap opera Prisoner: Cell Block H, so adored by gay viewers that it inspired a stage musical.
Its defining character was the butch prison guard Joan ‘The Freak’ Ferguson, who is now the governor — played with narrowed eyes and twitching lip by Pamela rabe. She gets lines like: ‘You are the property of Wentworth and this is my prison,’ before adding, ‘Bend over!’ as she strip-searches a prisoner.
on the landings, wrongfully jailed ‘Queen’ Bea Smith (Danielle Cormack) is still vying for control with drugs baron Frankie Doyle (Nicole da Silva).
Frankie runs the kitchens, but Queen Bea rules by sheer sapphic charisma. ‘You’re our heroine,’ gasps one besotted admirer.
You might expect that such crass drama could not survive in the face of the superior wit and writing of orange Is The New Black, the Netflix comedy-drama set in a U.S. women’s prison.
And you’d be wrong. Never underestimate the appeal of bad telly.