This eight-part French remake of an earlier Spanish TV series became the latest sub-titled fix of my wife and I. After a succession of Nordic Noir programmes, this Lyons-set mystery thriller made for an effective change of pace and kept us gripped until the end. Centring around the disappearance of an apparently captivating 17 year old girl after she attends an outdoor pop concert on her birthday, what follows is part police-procedural, part whodunnit and part examination of the effects of grief and loss on individual family and friends connected to the girl.
Unsurprisingly, over eight one-hour episodes, other murders follow, but there is thankfully no serial-killer excess, with a plausible explanation for the subsequent deaths and a reasonable twist at the end, where my previously smug and apparently accurate selection of the killer was controverted, at least somewhat, by the concluding events.
Unlike the familiar Swedish - Danish shows of late, the style here is less dark and oppressive. There is an identifiable French take on events, from much of the action centring on the family restaurant to the seemingly national trait of infidelity with almost every adult character having affairs outside of their established relationships.
The main focus is on the pressures which overtake the marriage of the mother and father of the deceased Lea, the husband who becomes obsessed with finding the killer, harassing the pursuing detective team and setting up his own incident room in his cellar while his wife bottles up her emotions as she tries to keep her family together and marriage intact.
My only gripes would be that I found it hard to accept that a young girl like Lea could beguile so many men, both young and old, as she apparently does, plus I'm not certain the police would actually tolerate the seemingly ever-present attention of the crazed husband-father. Nevertheless, unshowily but effectively directed and excellently acted by almost every cast member, this was an intensely good production from start to finish.
