“Master Crimes: Season 2” – TV Series Review

In  “Master Crimes: Season 2”,  Professor Arbus and her posse of post-grads return for six more 45-minute episodes of solving murders via psychology and logic, usually differing from where the available clues would lead normal police forces, in this light French procedural. The main cast returning for Season 2 includes Muriel Robin as Professor Louise Arbus, Anne Le Nen as Barbara Delandre, Olivier Claverie as Oscar Rugasira, Victor Meutelet as Samuel Cythere, Astrid Roos as Mia Delaunay, Nordine Ganso as Boris Volodine, Thaïs Vauquières as Valentine Vallée, Michaël Cohen as Théodore Belin, Léon Durieux as Grégoire, and Nicolas Briançon as Pierre Delaunay.

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The crimes and twists are comparable in quality to the first season. The humor is somewhat more prevalent, as Arbus and Delandre have become friendly, and comfortable with each other’s skill sets. There are also more romantic and other types of intrigue among all the principals that unfold throughout the season. The most notable arc is for Valentine, the perky social media maven, who adds new dimensions, tinged with mystery, to her character. We also learn a lot more about Mia’s backstory and its residual complications.

As far as principal plots in the stand-alone episodes are concerned, they open with a nekked dead guy, posed like The Thinker in a gallery (no naughty bits shown on-camera). He’d been the model for a small art therapy class of fresh-faced suspects. The second begins with a stiff in a cave within a hippie-style, self-sufficient eco-community, replete with secrets beneath its Kumbaya façade. Then we go to a dead dude in a wolf mask, laid out in a pet cemetery. He was the founder of a successful dating site that matches couples, using their pets as the prime indicator of compatibility.

Then a rich young woman who embarrassed her family by running her own sex site is found dead in her horse’s stall of the family stable. Obsessive fan, or family squabble behind the crime? The next involves the preserved head of a woman, posed in a coffin that’s part of the décor in an Escape Room adventure. The last starts with a burned body in a burned circle in the guy’s back yard. It looks like some sort of ritual, which is confirmed by other boldies appearing in the same charred condition at the same time.

There’s no need to binge this one, since each is a new crime. In fact, it might be better not to. Arbus’ well-earned aura of wry superiority straddles the fence between amusing and smugness. Too much of that too close together might grate on some viewers. As before, all the crimes are solved, as are most of the subplots. No cliffhangers, though the finale dangles a new matter begging for a third season. I truly hope it shall come to pass.

“Master Crimes: Season 2”, in French with subtitles, streams on MHz Choice on November 11, 2025.

3 Out Of 4 Stars