French TV

Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 3×1-3×2

Engrenages (Spiral)

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:

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UK TV

Spiral (Engrenages) – season three. What’s happening?

Well, after a bit of investigation, I’ve tracked down what’s happening with season three of Engrenages (Spiral), which has just finished its BBC4 run.

So season three is going to be 12 episodes long and it’s been shot in and around Paris (particularly the 19th arrondissement, and inside the Palais de Justice and the Hôtel Dieu) in two blocks: 25th June to the 2nd October this year was the first block, with the second block running from 12th October to the 29th January next year.

As for the plot, it’s going to “delve into the deranged mind” of a serial killer, the Butcher of Villette, who kills and mutilates young girls. The show will look at the difficulty of dealing with a high-profile media crime, where even the slightest mistake can have terrible consequences (I’m translating here, in case you couldn’t guess).

Interestingly, the BBC is assisting with the show, at least financially, so that should mean BBC4 should be picking up the third season at some point. As for who’s coming back from the cast, we have Caroline Proust (Laure), Audrey Fleurot (Karlsson), Grégory Fitoussi (Clement), Philippe Duclos (Roban), Thierry Godard (Gilou) and Fred Bianconi (Fromentin), at least. No word on Samy, I’m afraid.

I’ve dropped a line to the Beeb about air dates and whether they’re going to show it and I’ll let you know if/when they get back to me.

UK TV

Season finale: Engrenages (Spiral) 2×8

Engrenages (season 2)

In the UK: Sunday 1st November 2009, 10pm, BBC4. Available on the iPlayer

Well, it’s over now. Time for a collective snivel by viewers of quality TV in Britain. Please, Sir, can we have some more? Etc, etc.

Let’s face facts, season two of Spiral aka Engrenages has just finished on BBC4. So let’s look over the final episode and the season as a whole, because until season three pops along, this is all we’re getting.

Continue reading “Season finale: Engrenages (Spiral) 2×8”

UK TV

Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 2×6

Spiral 2x6

In the UK: Sunday 18th October, 10.15pm, BBC4. Available on the iPlayer

Tension mounts on Engrenages as the police close in on Aziz, we discover that French domestic violence laws need some work, and that France’s witness protection programme needs even more work (because it doesn’t have one).

Not that you’d be getting all that tension necessarily from the subtitles – which need work, too. Spoilers and more after the break.

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