Maigret Series 2 -UK Region

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

Britain’s ITV made a wonderful 1992-1993 “Maigret” series that adapted twelve of George Simenon’s “Maigret” mystery novels for the small screen. In 2016-2017, ITV produced an updated series and bizarrely cast the comedian Rowan Atkinson in the role of Chief Inspector Jules Maigret. In keeping with the decade-long tradition of writing all television detectives with the same personality, this Maigret is introverted, soft-spoken, and possesses uncanny insight. There are two 90-minute episodes, filmed in Budapest, Hungary to look like 1950s Paris. Atkinson comes off as not even slightly French, however, which is an impediment. Simenon’s Maigret is a physically robust, while Atkinson’s is slight and too old. The comedian’s idea of acting is to make a lot of strange facial expressions, which are more than a little out of place in a post-War Parisian constabulary.

The episodes are based on Simenon’s novels “Maigret at the Crossroads” (1931) and “Maigret and the Strangled Stripper” (1950), though both had different titles in French. ITV’s “Night at the Crossroads” is slightly better than “Maigret in Montmartre.” The latter adapts one of Simenon’s most acclaimed novels, so it suffers in comparison to other interpretations, to put it mildly. These films adopt another decade-long British tradition of touching on every politically fashionable agenda-of-the-moment they can, which is overbearing. Characters speak in a manner that people did not speak in polite company at the time. Hammy over-acting pervades. “Maigret in Montmartre” is so bad that it can scarcely be described. It is unconvincing on every level. The mystery is incoherent. The characters are inhuman. Every attempt at suspense falls flat. It is tedious.

The mysteries are:

“Night at the Crossroads”: Mme. Michonnet (Robin Weaver), a chatty woman who cooks for her neighbors, goes to the garage to fetch paraffin for the stove one day and finds a dead man in her neighbor’s car. The man was Isaac Goldberg, a jeweler from Antwerp, suspected in the fencing of stolen diamonds. Maigret receives a call asking him to stop Carl Anderson (Tom Wlaschiha) and his sister Else (Mia Jexen) at the train station in Paris, as they are suspects in the crime. The pair are Danish nationals. When Maigret interviews Carl, he cannot explain the dead man in his garage or the gun in his pocket, always replying: “I cannot help you with that.” Disagreement arises between Maigret and his old friend and colleague, Inspector Louis Grandjean (Kevin McNally), the local officer on the case who wants to charge Anderson, while Maigret wants to follow other leads.

“Maigret in Montmartre”: A stripper calling herself Arlette (Olivia Vinall) gets spooked in the middle of her performance at a Paris nightclub and leaves the building quickly, eventually bumping into a police officer. She goes to the station where she tells Maigret about a murder plot she overheard to kill a Countess. The next day, Arlette is found strangled in her flat. Maigret interviews the proprietors of the nightclub, Rosa (Lorraine Ashbourne) and Fred Alfonsi (Douglas Hodge), who were helping and sleeping with Arlette, respectively, while his team tries to locate any countesses in Paris. Inspector Lapointe is hiding something of material importance to the investigation. The only Countess they find was a morphine addict with no obvious connection to Arlette, a respectable supplier, and a friend and fellow addict named Philippe (Sebastian De Souza) who has disappeared.

– mirasreviews

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Rowan Atkinson, Shaun Dingwall, Leo Starr, Lucy Cohu, Aidan McArdle
Directors: Ashley Pearce, Jon East
Writers: Stewart Harcourt, Georges Simenon
Producers: Jeremy Gwilt
Format: PAL
Language: English
Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired: English
Region: Region 2
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 – 1.78:1
Number of discs: 1
Classification: To be announced
Studio: BBC
DVD Release Date: 5 Feb. 2018
Run Time: 176 minutes
ASIN: B078GGNDFW