Saint-Pierre

I like Allan Hawco and Josephine Jobert.

I like the back drop of St Pierre.

I like the bilingualism.

I want to like this show but until episode 6 it is one cliche after another.

But it really redeems itself in Episode 6! There may be hope for this show!

Up until episode 6 I thought this:

This is wIf you are a fan of cozy mysteries you will recognize every single plot of every single episode at the beginning of the show. Even the side stories are cliches. It is only the music that creates suspense.

Surely between France and Canada some writers with some creativity could be located...

Maybe send these two detectives out to comb these two countries and find a creative team capable of coming up with a plot worthy of the actors and the location.

In Episode 2 of Saint-Pierre we get to see Bastille Day celebrations. Suddenly Arch and Fitz discover a mysterious body and much hijinx ensues. The two of them clash over their different approaches - Fitz goes by his gut and Arch cares about evidence. This ends up being entertaining to watch the two of them disagree.

Overall I've been so impressed with Josephine Jobert's acting. I'm excited to see her onscreen chemistry and friendship with Allan take shape. Saint-Pierre as a location is really neat to see and its fun to see new facets of the island in each episode. Looking forward to the next episode to see where it takes us!

Love love the setting. Exquisite. It is the star of the show for now.

However, we are damned with the same old, stale plot line of a crime that is solved in 47 minutes. People are more sophisticated now with Netflix and British crime series that take the crime over a number of episodes. Stop the "Murder She Wrote" template and go for the more complex, like Netflix "Lincoln Lawyer" or "Mr. & Mrs. Smith". Both only an hour long but gave the viewer a story that we could sink our teeth into. Hence their success! Trust me we can handle it.

Same with the character development. Too many paper-thin tropes. The sassy female, the crooked captain, the rich villain, the newcomer with a sorry tale. All of these are fine in general, but you absolutely need to give them some depth. Make them interesting, juicy. Canada's "Family Law", for instance, their characters have some meat on the bones. Have to engage your viewer in stories with weight and characters we care about and want to know more.

I see that the current rating is 8.1 which this TV show does not deserve, not by a long shot. There is nothing new here, a bunch of stereotypical writing, I kept hoping that my prime suspect from episode 1 is not going to be the one who actually did it but of course it was and when that happens, I kind of tend to lose any interest in any new episodes. It's not fun guessing 15 minutes in who did it, is it? I also had a feeling of watching Death in Paradise but then I realized that the female lead was in it (quite frankly didn't recognize her). I am not going to continue watching, but kudos to everybody who is, just not worth my time.

This show has me scratching my head, and partly at my own response to it. There's definitely something (or a few things) not quite right, but I'm not sure if it's the occasionally disastrous acting or actors (the actor who plays Arch's boss Marcus is abysmal, with one and only one facial expression in his toolbox), their inability to rise above sometimes mediocre and/or clichéd scripts, or simply bad direction. So I don't want to blame it all on the writers or actors, because direction has got to have something to do with it. And yet despite all that, I watch the show religiously every week and continue to be entertained by it. Maybe it's the earnestness of the leads, IDK, but I still enjoy it and I hope they can work out the problems for a better S2.