Non élucidé

First: "Non-Elucide" is available on Youtube only in un-subtitled French. You'll have to understand the language to watch it. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't have that opportunity. This series combines theatrical film quality production values, scripting, and first-rate special effects. All this, with gut-wrenching stories of some of the most notorious crimes in recent French history.

Arnaud Poivre d'Arvor, the series "presenter," is a cerebral and sincere host. In the most terrifying episodes, you can see how moved he and Jean-Marc Bloch are by the murders they discuss. Bloch is retired from France's National Police, a man whose insights into each case show a detective still very much at work. I began watching when I learned of the John List-style murders committed by Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes. This episode alone will bring tears of fear to your eyes and a lump of sorrow to your throat.

But so will many other Non Elucide episodes: the small-hours rest-stop murder of the young father executed while the lot was full of eighteen-wheelers and his two children slept; a strikingly similar massacre not far away of a Middle Eastern family in Haute Savoie; the dismemberment of the near-elderly female pensioner near the Belgian border; the eerie killing in an affluent country town near Lyon of a young female student whose family does not seem forthcoming in their knowledge of how she was stabbed to death.

The cinematography, if you can use that word to describe a television series, is perfect. The vision of France the producers work so hard to evoke is the France we all dreamed of pre-European Union and terrorist attacks. We see only the most beautiful streets, country lanes, mountain ranges--all almost always emptied of people and lit theatrically and filmed after dark.

The dramatic effort shouldn't offend social justice folk. France as we know it is in danger of dying; and Non Elucide wants it to stay alive. A petition to keep the show on the air fell short of 5,000 signatures required by France 2. This is a shame. In June, 2017, the saddest case of all-- the notorious 32-year-old case of "Petit Gregory"--still unresolved-- came back to French television with Poivre d'Arvor doing an update. This unbearable case of a child murder might yet be solved, and France 2 respected it enough to let Non Elucide do an update. [EDIT: As of January 2020, RMC Story, a channel of BFMTV, has brought Non Elucide back. Americans can find it on Youtube.]

You know a show is good when it makes you care about people you can't help achieve justice. That's how good Non Elucide is. If you can understand spoken French, DO NOT MISS Non Elucide. And Thank You, RMCStory, for bringing back this excellent, intelligent, non-exploitative, true crime series.