Tune in or turn off: which series are worth watching?

20 January 2017 - 22:38 By Andrew Donaldson
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Andrew Donaldson shares some recommendations

Maigret

Could Mr Bean pull off Jules Maigret? To be honest, I was a bit worried when I learnt that Rowan Atkinson was to play perhaps the most famous policeman in the French-speaking world in the reboot, Maigret (BBC First, DStv 119).

As a rule, comedians don't do detectives very well. Anyone who has had the misfortune to watch David Walliams mug and simper through Partners in Crime, the BBC's hammy adaptation of Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence mysteries, will attest to that.

But Atkinson is a far better actor than we perhaps realise, and he gradually takes control of his role here as the ruminative commissioner of the Paris Brigade Criminelle.

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That is, with each passing moment of this sumptuous period production, the anticipation that Atkinson will start shouting for Baldrick recedes, and we gradually succumb to the world-weary resignation he brings to the role.

The detective is, of course, the brainchild of George Simenon, who wrote 76 Maigret novels and 28 short stories between 1931 and 1972. They've been serialised for television and radio many times before.

Some critics have pointed out that Atkinson is not as burly as previous Maigrets, that he's literally too slight for the role. But, again, these concerns fade within a few minutes of the first episode, Maigret Sets a Trap, a serial murder case in the backstreets of 1950s Montmartre.

The series was shot in Budapest. Throw in a few accordions, glamorous extras in berets, one or two silly accents and the odd bicycle and we get a decent Parisian demi-monde, a world of nightclubs, stripper bars and brothels in which our detective has planted attractive policewomen as bait for the killer.

One does get attacked - but, being new to police work, she forgets to look at her attacker's face. Luckily, Maigret is not too thrown by this setback. He will get his man. He always does. He is, after all, the French version of Inspector Morse.

Endeavour

The fourth season of Endeavour (ITV Choice, DStv 123) stars Shaun Evans as a young Inspector EndeavourMorse.

The season kicks off two weeks after the events in last season's finale. Which means it's still 1967, and the Summer of Love maintains its thrilling grip on an otherwise sleepy Oxford.

There are, naturally, murders and they unfold against a backdrop of a straitlaced Britain trying to have a good time.

The characters, at least in the first episode, did all seem rather familiar. There were louche and druggy pop stars, who could well have been inspired by Keith Richards or even The Kinks. There was a publisher of an underground magazine who was prosecuted for obscenity, and he was perhaps modelled on Richard Neville, publisher of Oz, a magazine famously prosecuted for obscenity in 1971.

And lastly, there was a prim and meddlesome old dear campaigning for the removal of filth and pornographic content from the television and the wireless. Her character, of course, is a dead ringer for Mary Whitehouse, renowned enemy of social liberalism and the mainstream media. All in all, a great deal of fun.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Lugubrious and deadpan adaptation of the Lemony Snicket children's books. Think of it as the sort of self-consciously Gothic drollery that is the hallmark of filmmakers like Tim Burton and Wes Anderson and know that you're in safe hands here. (Netflix)

Van Helsing

Kelly Overton is Vanessa Helsing, a distant relative of the vampire hunter Abraham van Helsing and who is "resurrected" in 2019 to find that the undead have taken over the world. Mindlessly enjoyable tosh. (Netflix)

Deutschland 83

Superious Cold War spy series with Jonas Nay as an East German conscript who is sent to the West as an undercover agent for the HVA, the foreign intelligence agency of the Stasi. Utterly gripping. (DStv Catch Up)

This article was originally published in The Times.

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