The Sketch Artist (Portrait - Robot)

By the end of series 2, I'm afraid I was bored with the characters, bored with their personal problems, which sometimes just swamped the crimes being investigated, and bored with the visual aesthetics. Some time ago, I ducked out of another Canadian series, 'The Coroner', after the last 20 minutes of the first episode attempted to make me interested in the private life of the central character. I can take a certain amount of this - it goes with the territory - but here the setup with the four central characters appears to have been strategically devised with this aspect in mind. I like crime dramas but I do not watch soap opears. Adieu a tous.

I checked this out on the PBS website, because it looked like a bit of a change from the copycat crime/mystery series populating PBS offerings these days.

I was right. From the very start, we learn that the four main characters are a fascinating little group of misfits, and the actors who portray them are wonderful too. Then add in the two or so other characters who are regulars on the show, and you have a full deck of entertainment.

So it's sort of immaterial what the investigations and crimes are, because the characters' personal lives are even more interesting. But the writers are good and have cooked up an imaginative slate of crime and mystery events, some of which regularly intersect with a mob boss and some which give the viewer a gasp of surprise and shock when they suddenly happen.

One other interesting thing is that the series takes place in Montreal, so the characters speak French (with easy-to-read subtitles), or rather a Franglais mix of weirdly accented Montreal French called 'Joual' mixed with English words, phrases, and sentences. It's pretty interesting in itself.

It took me a while to warm to this original crime drama series about a police sketch artist who helps to solve crimes investigated by the Montreal Police by using all her skills and emotional intelligence to create electronic 'identikit' profiles of both victims and suspects. Éve Garance (played by Rachel Graton) is surrounded by a rather oddball bunch of colleagues, but while they all contribute something interesting, her civilian background and kind of superpower of 'reading' people make Éve central to solving each crime. The final 'piece' in the 'jigsaw', if you like, and in that sense 'Portrait-Robot' AKA 'The Sketch Artist' is reminiscent of CBS's wonderful 'The Mentalist' in the noughties.

Credit to all the actors and production staff involved, particularly Sophie Lorain who plays Maryse Ferron, Éve's logic-obsessed wheelchair-bound boss and Alexis Durand-Brault who directs the action (Lorain and Durand-Braul also wrote the series), and the other co-stars Rémy Girard as the moribund veteran 'hack' detective Bernard Dupin and his rookie sidekick crime scene technician Anthony Kamal (Adrien Bélugou) add a bit of intrigue and humour to the proceedings. It wouldn't be 'noir', of course, if Éve didn't have some sort of personal issues, but the on the whole the 2-episode story arcs steer clear of the worst clichés and I felt there was enough by the end of Series 1 to want more. I watched 'Portrait-Robot' on British television as part of the 'Walter Presents ...' features of mainly foreign language crime dramas on Channel 4, but would imagine the series is widely available. Give it a go, why don't you?

The trouble is though that the prémisses and the characters are not particularly believable. Remy Girard playing seasoned detective Bernard Dupin was seventy when the series was filmed and admits to being that age as part of a plot in Season Two. It's inconceivable that he'd be on field work as he's grossly overweight and can barely walk. And he's way past the age for retirement. Even worse, he subdues fit young thugs and hitmen without any trouble at all. In real life these guys would have pulverised him.

As for Eve Garance, the sketch artist, it just isn't credible that she gets witnesses to remember small details such as a mole or an earring, or even eye colour, in the contest of a rapid set of events or just a glimpse of the perp.

Maryse and Anthony have important supporting rôles as the head of the unit and CSI boy respectively. The writers seem to have woken up to the fact that they should have written in a techy IT person from the beginning so Elektra had a far more prominent place in the action in season two.

In the background, we have not particularly convincing human interest stories about the five main characters.

The crimes they deal with are over the top even for north America.

I admit I binge-watched but it's still pretty rubbishy. However, the actors and the tight direction kept it together for the main part.

We had three major cliffhangers at the end of season two. I assume a third one will come next year.

This French Canadian crime drama is set in Montreal and opens with Anthony Kamal starting his first day forking for a special unit of the local police. Here he meets his new boss, Maryse Ferron; veteran officer Bernard Dupin and sketch artist Eve Garance. Eve has the ability to 'read' people and coax them to reveal details they didn't realise they'd seen to come up with accurate likenesses of suspects and the crime scene. She is also bi-polar and haunted by the disappearance of her baby son many years previously. Other characters have their own problems too. Most cases last two episodes but there are elements that run through the series.

I've watched many series in French but I think this is the first French Canadian show I've watched. On the strength of this I wouldn't mind checking out a few more. The cases are interesting and our protagonists are varied and likeable. It also manages to provide some interesting surprises. Having two episode cases alongside longer running stories is effective; giving satisfaction each time one is solved while keeping one interested in the longer plot arcs. It does inevitably require some suspension of disbelief... I couldn't describe somebody I see every day in the detail witnesses recall following a glimpse some time ago. The cast does a solid job bringing their characters to life. Overall I'd recommend this to fans of subtitled crime dramas.

These comments are based on watching the series in French with English subtitles.