In France: Last Summertime
In the UK: Saturday 2nd April, 9pm, BBC4. Available on the iPlayer
Bonjour, tout le monde! Welcome aboard previous Engrenages (Spiral) lovers and hello to all those of you with a The Killing-shaped hole in their Saturday night TV schedules and thought you’d give a French TV series a try.
Yes, after months of our collective breath holding, Spiral is back with typical high-powered BBC4 advertising – a brief trailer after last week’s The Killing – ready to make us all go “WTF? No, seriously, WTF? That’s seriously how France runs its justice system?” again at Canal+’s answer to The Wire. All our old favourites are back: Laure, the captain of police, consummate cock-up artist and lover of brutality; Pierre, the handsome ambitious prosecutor; Roban, the ambiguously sexual, fair but draconian judge; Gilou, the over-emotional prosie-loving detective; ‘Tin Tin’, the cipher; the wonderfully evil, foul-mouthed red-headed lawyer Karlsson; and that weird chief lawyer who looks like a lizard. He’s odd-looking. It’s the eyes, isn’t it?
To accompany us on our ride into darkness, we also have the usual gruesome scenes, blanket misogyny, prissy subtitles, police corruption and rule-breaking, and eye-opening sub-plots that we’ve come to expect from Spiral – as well as a new singular image to illuminate and potentially define a whole season. In season one, it was women suffocated by transparent plastic; in season two, it was Aziz setting fire to people in cars in the banlieues; in season three, it’s a handwritten sign: “Fermé pour pédophilie.”
Here’s a slightly low quality trailer in French for the first two episodes:
Plot
1/12. When the mutilated body of a woman is found, police captain Laure Berthaud investigates.
2/12. With a second girl reported missing, police take in another suspect.
Happily, we start off with callbacks to both seasons 1 and 2. Prosecutor Pierre has been called in to head up the investigation of the murder of a dead girl – just as with season 1 – and picks Laure, who after the massive cock-ups of season 2, is in nobody’s good books and needs to redeem herself. It soon becomes clear thanks to some extremely graphic imagery that the woman has been mutilated and raped by a psychopathic sadist and the police are going to have tough, but interesting times ahead.
Gilou, who was having a relationship with a prostitute back in season 1 if you recall, has to recuse himself, ostensibly because he screwed up when the dead girl’s grandmother reported her missing two days earlier by not circulating the information. He’s also applied for a transfer, something that the now isolated and stressed Laure isn’t best pleased about.
The police soon find that the dead girl had a friend who helped her lose her virginity to a much older man, a photographer and paedophile, and in typical Engrenages style, totally screw up his life for him. They also find her boyfriend, an illegal immigrant who’s into a bit of voodoo, and they also find that another girl who looks similar to the dead girl has gone missing.
Meanwhile, Pierre is finding that all his political manoeuvring in season two has gone completely pear-shaped and he’s been shunted upstairs to the driving offences department, which bores him senseless.
Karlsson is still working for crooked lawyer Szabo, but after one of his clients is arrested, his associates think she and Szabo are responsible and put a hit out on them both. Since bad guys are largely made of teflon in Engrenages, neither of them die, but Karlsson comes out of it all a little changed for the experience.
Lastly, the sub-plots – which no doubt in the usual Engrenages style will all dovetail together with the main plot before the end of the season – are the province of Judge Roban. A dangerous dog shows what can (apparently) happen to anyone who reports a crime in France, even bereaved parents, if they haven’t behaved 100% perfectly up until that point, thanks to the inquisitorial system. And then the lizard-eyed, gay-hating chief prosecutor, who wanted Pierre to keep an eye on Roban, turns up to point out that the Mayor would quite like Roban to ease off and the thoroughly moral but political Roban does off course go for the jugular straight after promising the exact opposite. We also get to see a little of Roban’s personal life, thanks to his mum having a stroke.
Credits
Pierre Clement (Gregory Fitoussi)
Laure Berthaud (Caroline Proust)
Francois Roban (Philippe Duclos)
Josephine Karlsson (Audrey Fleurot)
Gilou (Thierry Godard)
Was it any good?
I didn’t enjoy it as much as the previous two seasons, since it didn’t quite have the realism and grit of those two, but there were some wonderful moments and given that much of the season is going to be about the media’s reaction to the murders, it’s clear it’s not really got into top gear yet.
Season three is very much a mix of the first two seasons, so far. The first season did a wonderful job of establishing characters, bringing in politics and looking at the problems that are prevalent throughout the French justice system. Season two, however, was very much plot driven. Although it usually had a “problem of the week”, it was largely about Aziz, the misogynistic, ultraviolent drug dealer, the Larbi crime family and the reassuringly competent undercover cop Samy, who like Pierre between seasons 1 and 2, seems to have broken up with Laure, and marched on to pastures new without anyone saying a word about why.
Season 3, however, is a more streamlined affair with more or less everything focused on the main crime, Roban’s investigations and politics. But it’s also remembered to service its characters – the writers have remembered that Karlsson and Pierre used to be friends; Gilou, who was pretty much ignored for most of season 2, is suddenly front and centre again; and Laure gets to step towards the Abyss a little more.
We also get a few wonderful WTF moments, including that iconic “Fermé pour pédophilie” scene, Gilou’s interrogation of the girl, which becomes thoroughly unpleasant once he bends the rules and switches off the camcorder, Pierre’s iPhone fun during the court proceedings, Laure’s lies to the grandmother designed to protect Gilou, the chief prosecutor’s decision not to prosecute a homophobic hate crime because he thinks gays are immoral, the medical examiner refusing to put things in her report that make it easier for the defence lawyers, and Roban’s turning on the soon-to-be bereaved parents who have come to him for help.
But it feels a lot more over the top and unrealistic than previous seasons. As well as Laure leaving important personnel documents lying around for Gilou to find, the motorcycle hit squad and their jammed guns seemed seriously unlikely, the voodoo boyfriend in a deserted clinic seemed close to racism and Laure’s descent into madness, given her career’s on the line, just a little atypical, even if continues a theme of the second season.
And for a story in which teenage girls are being killed in very graphic and unpleasant ways, exploited by paedophiles, and called sluts by the police, Laure’s problems in connection with the collapse of the formerly indestructible Karlsson following her attack make it feel a very female-unfriendly show – particularly now in comparison to The Killing, which had a similarly themed storyline but gave us the marvellous but still flawed Sarah Lund to balance it out.
Nevertheless, despite these problems, Spiral/Engrenages is still reassuringly good. The cast are as on form as ever, the central mystery is strong, the subtle politicking is still there, and it’s still as fascinating to watch as ever. Here’s to its return – and next week’s episodes.
