Rowan Atkinson assumes the mantel of Simenon's pipe-smoking French detective in ITV's new adaptation - the first of two - shown on Easter Monday. Atkinson wisely underplays the Inspector, but we found it hard to put Mr Bean and various Edmund Blackadders thoroughly behind us. All credit to him for those lasting creations, but it hindered our immersion in the lively, rather seedy Montmartre of the 1950s.
This story concerned that modern crime drama staple, the serial killer, and naturally the victims are women who happen to be out alone late at night. Maigret's team are stricken at their inability to catch the culprit, and threatened with being taken off the case, until the great man comes up with a daring ruse to smoke out the killer. Will it work, or go horribly wrong...?
An oddity, is all we can say. Ponderously slow except for a chase which feels like it was crowbarred into the midst of proceedings to liven things up. Most of it looked expensive, but the chase appeared to have been filmed on a camcorder. Maybe it's the nature of its dated source material, but the dialogue was as stilted as if it had been lifted directly from the French, and the interior scenes had the staged feel of a forgotten drawing-room play. A waste of a very good cast and some lovely couture.
Remember Marchlands, the ITV chiller set in 3 timeframes? Well here's Lightfields, the ITV chiller set in 3 timeframes. It's not a sequel, it's a follow-up, in the sense that 'Lewis' is a follow-up to 'Morse', which means the house is different and so are the characters but the basic setup is the same: someone dies horribly and comes back as a ghost to haunt two later groups of inhabitants.
This one has not-so-innocent teenager Lucy (Antonia Clarke) in 1944 having an affair with Dwight, the only American airman for miles (Neil Jackson). He's the spookiest thing in it, coaxing women to take walks with him and turning up behind trees and in barns, always alone. Unfortunately she's thumbing her nose at her new friend Eve, who met him first, and two local lads who fancied their chances. There may be trouble ahead... which is confirmed when Vivien (Lucy Cohu, freed from her 'Ripper Street' corsets) and daughter Clare (Karla Crome, so good in 'Murder') move into Lightfields in 1975 and hear a girl laughing, see doors opening and - you get the picture. At the end of the episode she turns up in the bedroom of the 2012 family home of Danny Webb and Sophie Thompson. We didn't catch their names as the modern segment has had little else to offer in the way of thrills or interest so far. The old man was around in 1944 (as Pip, Lucy's younger brother), but wistful looks and rolling eyeballs yield little in the way of thrills.
Everything is pretty well signalled. 1944 has cardigans and swing tunes, 1975 has volvos, pigtails and a disco (but no dungarees, a definite improvement on 'Marchlands') and 2012 has, well, let's just say a dreary familiarity. Will we be watching episodes 2 - 5? Oh probably. Suckers for doors opening by unseen hands and cracked dusty mirrors in barns, we are!
