moomin-4

This 8 part French detective serial is going out un-publicisied on BBC3 in the UK. It has some resemblances to the very darkest American cop shows, but is really grimmer and dirtier. There are unifying themes and tangents which may work into the main plot. It's impossible to explain how different things are from a UK police drama. The legal system is very different and it's fascinating to follow - who has power to do what to whom. The Police and Prosecutors aren't exactly corrupt, but in a way they can't help being. The police look like criminals and work out of what seems like a run-down basement. A brilliantly convoluted thriller, with all the fascination of a really alien legal system, Paris backdrop, washed out colours, general decay. Final episode on BBC next week, but you should be able to see it somewhere. I see from Amazon France that there's a second season.

This was a drama that refused to allow you any easy entertainment, had you quite disorientated at regular intervals, made 'minor' dramatic events absolutely absorbing, and was transfixing from the start nearly to the finish, which I felt slackened off a bit. There are hardly any clear moral rights and wrongs. The actors are mostly completely amateur, but obviously brilliantly schooled by the producers/director in how to be realistic. Just every so often the BBC can come with work such as this, like 'Bodies' which make standard police/hospital/etc. dramas seem absurdly unreal by comparison. I came out of these programmes feeling genuinely stirred, and, as if I'd really been involved in something.