Maigret's Dead Man

Very good movie with awesome filming , acting and story. High recommended move to see in this genre.

This is a way better instalment than Maigret Sets A Trap, which was so predictable as to be barely held up by some of the cream of English acting talent. Maigret is an interesting idea. There are no French accents here. One has to wonder what British actors are doing playing Frenchmen in France, but such a scenario has been shown to work well in certain circumstances. It worked really well in Spartacus and Rome for example, although in Spartacus serious attempt was made to reflect Latin. It works well here too. Great trouble has been made to reflect the times and culture. No doubt ladies delighted at their fashions, and men felt the part in their suits. Rowan Atkinson is well cast, and does a good job, though I doubt he'll win any awards, the role isn't that demanding and probably reflects his true character more than does his comedy. There was another TV series similar in intent to this one some years back called Jericho. I thought that had real authenticity, if slightly exaggerated, especially when looking at urban London bonhomie of the 1950s. Here's a thought: Isn't it refreshing to watch a detective series where the lead detective is NOT undergoing some unbelievably distracting trauma at home? That's both Jericho and Maigret (as far as I've seen). And for that alone I most certainly welcome this new player to my tv screen.

I liked it so much because of the slow but tense rhythm of the history, the details of the characters, Atkinson being very accurate of the very heart of Maigret, but even more, giving power to the character. The secondaries and cast are very good too.

Only Poirot and a handful of TV mystery dramas can compare with this.

On the other side, the only thing I can say is that it looks like London, not like Paris, besides the effort they do to translate everything on the screen to french and use of the stone paved streets.

Congratulations to the team, the script and everyone else.

I hope the today's TV learned something.

A masterclass on how TV drama should be made.

Every camera angle is a painting and not a second is wasted.

(Take note, BBC... there is no need to insert noisy music, misplaced minorities and left wing ideology to make first class drama.)

This time, the second outing of the latest re-boot, Maigret (Rowan Atkinson) almost takes a back seat to the events and characters that surround him. It's a low-energy drama that sees a heavy emphasis on characters and almost none on action.

Also, there isn't much of a story to sink yourself into and unlike the Foyle mysteries, there doesn't seem to be that slow crescendo of suspense that leads to a final act.

This style of drama probably won't appeal much to many people under thirty years old!

But for me, this was a treat... the meticulous yet understated set details (the cars were old and dirty, NOT showroom new and shiny clean!), the disarming harmony between Maigret and Mrs Maigret, the music (which mostly stayed in the background where it should be)... it was British TV drama at it's finest.

I hope that the team that went into this production stay together long enough to churn out a few more just like it. Merry Christmas, me!

The first entry in this new TV-film series that I watched, "Maigret Sets a Trap", had of course the advantageous / surprise element of seeing comedy actor Rowan Atkinson in one of his first and only dead-serious roles. That alone made the film worth watching, but on top of that it was also a tense and atmospheric adaptation of Georges Simenon's terrific novel centered on Chief-Inspector Jules Maigret. Atkinson already proved in the first film that he's perfectly suitable and capable of playing such a stoic and mature role and, judging by "Maigret's Dead Man", you'd almost consider him more of a veteran drama actor rather than a slapstick figure. The plot here is once again very engaging, the efforts that were taken to recreate Paris during the 1950s (by filming in Hungary) are very well-done and the moody atmosphere and dark themes compensate more than widely enough for the lack of actual action. In the Northwest of France, a few hours driving from Paris, entire families of farmers are brutally slaughtered and their houses robbed. Meanwhile, in Paris, Maigret is hooked on another mysterious case. A nervous man, clearly in some kind of lethal danger, attempted to get in contact with him, but vanished before Maigret could physically meet him. Later that night, the murdered and heavily mutilated body of this man gets dumped in the middle of a busy Parisian market square in true mafia style. Maigret is forbidden by his supervisors to further investigate the case, as he must assist his colleague in the farmhouse murders, but you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes (or even Jules Maigret) to figure out quickly that both cases are connected. "Maigret's Dead Man" assures good, solid made-for-television craftsmanship; nothing more but certainly nothing less.