La faille

Episodes of forty minutes, cliffhangers, twists and turns. What more could one want to while away lockdown evenings?

Fermont is a grim place to live, behind a wall and with many of its facilities seemingly underground and needing to be ventilated by huge fans. This is what we see virtually at the beginning of the initial episode; something has gone wrong and the ventilation is wafting a terrible odour into the shops and corridors.

Upon the discovery of the cause of this, an experienced CID detective is drafted into take charge of the investigation from the local cops. Her sense of personal relationships is a disaster zone but she manages well enough with the young cop who's assigned to her as principal helper.

Various characters have murky motivations and pasts; some have perverted desires that become clear as the series progresses. The investigation is set against commercial and political malarky involving the local mine owner and his wife the local mayoress as well as the separate ambitions of their son involving some very shady activities.

It stands to reason that there are several false trails and red herrings but if one can't work out "whodunnit" by the end of episode four, then it's all going in one ear and out of the other.

It's easy watching and a reasonably well-directed production. Some of the personal relationships from before the start of the events in the series are to be swallowed only with a fistful of salt but in general one can let their unrealness pass.

I enjoyed the dichotomy between the claustrophobic, confining atmosphere of the small mall housing the cop shop, boutiques, bars and services against the vastness of the countryside and its hinterland, some of which can only be reached by "Ski-Doo", an iconic Canadian type of snowmobile.

I didn't binge watch one after the other, but saw it all within a couple of days and enjoyed it. It's eminently forgettable and the opposite of profound but there's nothing wrong with that. It's a series that did its job.

Season 1 The started off fine, but you need a big woolly jumper just to watch. It looked so cold and bleak.

It is set in Labrador, Northern Quebec in French with English subtitles.

This first season is set in the mining town of Fermont, north-eastern Quebec, Canada.

Fermont's major structural feature is popularly known as the Wall, which comprises self-contained residential, commercial, recreational and educational buildings.

In La Faille the main protagonist, detective sergeant Céline (Isabel Richer), is sent from provincial capital Quebec City to investigate the murder of a stripper-prostitute, inside the Wall. Assisting Céline is local uniformed policeman Alex (Alexandre Landry).

Céline encounters her estranged daughter Sophie (Maripier Morin) who is married to the mine-owner's son Lou (Jean-Philippe Perras).

I was expecting this to finish around episode 4, or 6 at the latest, but it was drawn out way too long to 8 episodes.

By the end it all got so contrived and bizarre that it was very difficult to work out what it was all about.

Especially, frustrating was not knowing what happened to Lou and whether he was culpable in one or more misdemeanours.

I enjoyed "The Wall" in part because Céline Trudeau is at the forefront of the action, a gutsy, mature, experienced woman often outpacing her younger male counterparts. The storylines are interesting, and the settings are beautiful. (Plus, the language is so melodic for us non-French speakers.)

Each season's major crime is different, allowing Céline to shine, whether it's dealing with a small northern mining community's murders and mishaps, an urban environmental conference marred by murder or a trip down memory lane among her homefolks that unearths family secrets - literally.

If I have one complaint, it's that the story arcs are about 25% too long and tend to drag a bit. Solid editing could pick up the pace, keep the storyline intact and still allow the plots to develop and the characters to shine.

The first episode starts off by providing little or no context as to exactly what's happening. To make matters worse, there are many characters who are introduced in rapid succession in the first few scenes, and no context is provided as to who any of them are, or what their roles might be. As the first episode moves along in a disjointed and disconnected manner, viewers are taken from one location to the other, with little in the way of continuity of dialog to even start to pick up the threads of the story. By the middle of the first episode, the confusion and chaos is proving so tiresome that there is loss of viewer engagement, and the correct course of action is to cease watching the bit of rubbish.

This series from Quebec is centred on Céline Trudeau, a police detective. The first season, subtitled 'Cover Your Tracks' sees her dispatched to a remote mining town where the body of a young woman has been found; it is clearly murder. The way she died makes people wonder if an earlier death of a child wasn't the accident it was initially assumed to be. In the small community just about everybody knew the victim and there are plenty of suspects. Matters are complicated by the fact that somebody close to Céline is there.

The second season, titled 'The Château Murders' sees Céline back in the city of Quebec where she investigates the death of a man who was found dead in a prestigious hotel... in a bath of concrete. Is it revenge for deaths caused by a bridge collapse some years previously, related to a new bridge contract or is it something else? Céline and her new partner won't have an easy job finding the killer.

I thought this was an enjoyable crime drama. Céline isn't the most likeable of characters; she rubs most people the wrong way and more than once behaves in a dubious manner but grows on the viewer as the series progresses. The cases are interesting; providing plenty of suspects to keep one guessing. The locations are almost characters in their own right; snow covered in a way that makes the viewer almost feel the cold. The cast does a solid job bringing their characters to life. The identity of the killers aren't too obvious but I suspect most viewers will have guessed their identities some time before the reveal. Overall a solid drama; I enjoyed the first two seasons and look forward the third being available here some time,

These comments are based on watching the series in French with English subtitles.