The Cellars of the Majestic

This episode really did go for the seedy underbelly of Georges Simenon's stories. There are two strong swear words used. I wonder if the BBC switchboards were jammed after this was broadcast back in 1963?

It starts off with the murder of a French woman Mimi Clark at the Hotel Majestic in Paris. The husband is a visiting American businessman and Maigret soon finds out that the couple had an estranged marriage and he also has a mistress.

Was the husband the murderer or the shady man called Donge who works at the hotel and found the dead woman.

Maigret learns that Mimi was once an exotic dancer, there were three of them and they were basically strippers in Cannes. One by one they either fell pregnant or lost their figure.

Mimi too fell pregnant and she married her American businessman boyfriend. However it turns out that he was not the father, Donge was.

A blackmail plot holds the key to the murder of Mimi. It is basic greed.

I did like how Lucas was dispatched to Cannes to interview a drunken ex stripper Jo (Diana Coupland.) Despite his best efforts to pretend to act like a seedy agent, he his made out to be a cop.

Saw this on the UK Talking Pictures channel, who are showing all 4 series of Maigret, originally early 60s BBC. We're in the 4th series now, and the quality has generally improved, this one no exception.

This story was also done in the Gambon series, and told in a very similar way too, though they had a longer time than the bare hour here.

Maigret gradually pieces together a tale that started a few years ago, in Cannes, with a trio of dancers and a boyfriend, who's now at the Hotel Majestic in Paris, where the murder occurred. His bank makes it look like he's a blackmailer, but is it really him?!

Diana Coupland plays a stripper, some time before she did Bless This House sitcom with Sid James, no problem to a skilled actress. And the American millionaire husband of the murder victim (she had been one of the French dancers) gave his voice to Jeff in the Thunderbirds!

AND - added in Spring 2023 - now we've seen the French version, Bruno Cremer as Maigret. It was told in a similar way (that series did sometimes alter the book story somewhat) but rather slower (nearly 2 hours runtime, so a lot of meaningful pauses).