Maigret

When I was at the BBC in the 1990's I asked the library in Windmill Road to send up the episodes they had for viewing prior to a possible Video release. They said they had very few surviving episodes but sent what they had including a Christmas special. As I watched all the quality of this series was relived. Now that The Age of Kings has been retrieved and released on DVD this series would have been next on my wish list. It was superb, captured the atmosphere of Simenon's Paris perfectly with its Citroen Tractions, cobbled streets and bistros. The title sequence with Rupert Davies striking a match on a wall to light his pipe to the music of Ron Grainer was superb. Half the UK population flocked home to see it each week.

I believe the Michael Gambon Maigret was shot in Budapest because Paris didn't look like Paris any more! There are no such problems here. This is the Paris of the books, and Rupert Davies is Maigret exactly as Simenon conceived him. It was this authenticity that made me buy it as soon as it came out.

Thus the scenery and atmosphere are perfect. The stories, inevitably, are variable, but I'd call them good to excellent. The acting is solid rather than anything better - clearly there were no funds for retakes and there is usually a fluffed line or two in every episode.

The weak spot is the technical quality. Episode One is an outlier, in that it is so poor it is difficult to watch. From Episode Two it is very much better, but still not great. But then, would it have been any better for the TV viewer of the time, watching a 405 line transmission on an 18 inch set?

Anyway I'm delighted to have bought this wonderful time capsule.

Watching Maigret played by Rupert Davies when I should have been doing my homework is one of the reasons I did not so well at school. Others are, The Saint, Danger Man, Quatermass and the Pit, The Avengers, and so on. All the products of UK TV. But perhaps they were in fact produced by the Soviets to undermine the education of British kids like me. I have recovered but would really like the BBC to release the surviving Maigret episodes. They cant be doing any good stuck where they are.

Maigret showed me a France that excited my imagination and caused me to read every book that George Simenon ever wrote. I was not disappointed by Simenon. And Rupert Davies would have had a hard time convincing me that he was not genuinely French if we ever met. As for Ewen Solon, I could never see him as anything but Lucas in any subsequent appearances.

Nowadays TV drama is mostly the same as cinema drama, just with a smaller budget, and apart from news and current affairs, TV stations just play pre-recorded items. How different it was when this series was made. I'm not sure if the programmes went out live, but even if they didn't, they were made "as if" live, since editing early video tape was extremely difficult and expensive. So what you get with these shows is similar to what you get when you go to a live theatre performance: a company of actors working together in real time to present a story. Fabulous! And, yes, there are going to be the odd little errors, just as in the theatre. The only difference from live theatre is that, in this series, we have the addition of wonderfully evocative filmed sequences made in Paris in an era when it looked extremely Parisian. It's exciting. I don't mind at all about the small and rather cheap sets.

I don't care if its b&w & old. This will transport you to France -- Paris and the seaside and the countryside. I am so glad this series is available. It has an amazing cast of characters that you will believe are all French. I watch a lot of "foreign" films and have a higher tolerance for subtitles than most but it is a joy not to have to struggle with subtitles for once and still get the full flavor of another culture. Btw, I had no idea there were so many evil old ladies in France. Love the cafes, the food, the wine and Maigret's constant attempts to keep his pipe going. I found the first 3 seasons on Kino. Hoping the 4th will show up.