User Reviews

This story (re the Picrats club) has been covered by all 3 of the UK Maigret versions, the Rupert Davies ones (60s), Rowan Atkinson (20-teens), and this Gambon version (early 90s).

The story is quite complex for the running time (not the Atkinson one, which had a leisurely 2 hours less ads), and this version had Maigret needing to check out one victim's former life as a Countess on the Riviera, which had big clues for murders in Paris.

It also features Lapointe, being in love with a 'dancer', but being shocked by her dead body. Maigret has to shout at him, and indeed trusty Lucas at one point, as he has to organise his team, while piecing together some disparate clues.

The supporting cast in this was incredibly strong, Tony Doyle running the sleazy nightclub, Brenda Blethyn as his long-suffering wife, used to watching Doyle take dancers into the kitchen for a quick, er, 'audition', Minnie Driver in an early role as a seductive, alluring dancer (& murder victim), and Michael Sheen as a drug-addicted 'poof' who eventually is released, in the hope that he'll lead the police to the mysterious murderer, and that sets up an explosive finish. Terrific stuff, the time flew by!

Previously shown as Murder in Montmartre when it was adapted by the BBC in the 1960s. The first ever Maigret in the Rupert Davies version is the opener of the second series in the Michael Gambon iteration.

There are two Oscar nominees in the cast with Minnie Driver and Brenda Blethyn.

Driver plays Arlette, a stripper at Picratt's nightclub in Montmartre. After work she stops a policeman and tells him that she overheard a plot to murder a countess.

She later retracts the statement but is later found dead. Maigret discovers that Countess von Farnhem has been killed. She was a drug user, selling off her assets to fund her drug habit. He also finds out that one of his officers Inspector Lapointe was romantically involved with Arlette.

The owner of Picratt's nightclub, who uses the strippers for his own pleasure is regarded as the main suspect. However Maigret later becomes interested in a man known as Oscar.

He uses a drug addict called Philippe (Michael Sheen) to lure Oscar out to the open.

Despite the cast, I thought this was atmospheric but pedestrian. The ending with Oscar was anticlimactic. There should had been more buzz once Oscar came into the scene.