TV Watch: the last Maigret
Yesterday evening I watched the very last of the BBC’s early sixties dramatisations of some of Simenon’s Maigret stories. At the end of the episode, Talking Pictures hoped I’d enjoyed the series. I certainly did! Obviously, production techniques have improved dramatically since those days but I found I didn’t miss fancy camera angles or the kind of zooming about which makes me feel giddy. One of the pleasures of watching was how obviously French it all was. For instance, a cop is running down a street and passes a parked row of half a dozen ancient 2CVs. Quite irrelevant to the story, just part of the background. Then there’s the social attitudes. Knock, knock, a visitor arrives. ‘Ah, Bonjour Monsieur. Drink?’ And at any time of day. I also enjoyed spotting actors playing small roles then but who later became famous: Paul Eddington, Arthur Lowe, Joan Sanderson just three of many.
The previous episode had been shocking because one of Maigret’s team was murdered on duty. You could see Maigret’s struggle: rage and distress making him long to catch the culprit and kill him with his bare hands, while he fought for the self-control to behave in a civilised way. He himself was shot in that episode, so in Maigret’s Little Joke he’s off work sick with his arm in a sling and poor Madame Maigret battling as usual to get him away on holiday with *no work*. Hah! As if being wounded is going to stop him.
My favourite character (after Maigret himself), Lucas, has been promoted to Inspector and is in charge of a murder case. Maigret wanders around, not apparently doing much but the ‘little joke’ is that he keeps sending Lucas anonymous cards with pertinent questions on, such as, ‘Why is Madame X lying?’ As usual, the plot is somewhat complicated but Lucas and his patron solve the mystery. I find it surprising that Ewen Solon, the actor playing Lucas, is not a familiar face outside this series. I looked him up and found that he was born in New Zealand and had a whole string of acting credits yet he’s hardly a household name.
Here, on YouTube, Barry Forshaw gives an excellent introduction to both Simenon and the Rupert Davies series, before the episode The White Hat is shown. I have only just watched this, after writing my little piece and find that I agree with everything Forshaw says and he says it better than I have.
Click to view