CAPITAINE MARLEAU 35, Credits © Fabien MALOT – FTV – PASSION FILMS
My favorite curmudgeonly police detective, played delightfully by Corinne Masiero, once again drives her old jeep all over France, solving crimes beyond the ken of the local gendarmes in “Captain Marleau: Season Five”. As we’ve come to expect, she’s dressed in the same shabby outfit (although she switches among three plaid shirts, rather than sticking with only one), making our Lt. Columbo look like a GQ model, as she brashly wades through colleagues, suspects and witnesses with a stream of sarcasm that Dr. House could only dream of achieving. She’s rude and crude by design, since annoying others works so well as an investigative technique.
Here’s a link to prior seasons’ coverage, for those who seek a refresher. It’s not as essential as in most other series reviewed here, since each 90-minute episode is a new crime in a new locale, with very little plot carryover, or return of supporting characters.
Season 5 blesses us with the bounty of 10 episodes of La Capitain doing her thing with her usual tactics. Her disdain for the rich and powerful, whether her superiors or her suspects, is proudly flaunted in their faces. They hate it. Fans of the show love it. The most exotic of the new batch is the first, which begins with the disappearance of a stripper from the local Club Follies. Nobody gets nekked, but Zahia Dehar’s opening number before her character goes missing is quite a treat.
In the second, a town’s local hero who saved the sawmill that provides the bulk of its economic base may not be the good guy everyone believes him to be. Next, a porcine crime boss turns states’ evidence, putting Marleau in the unusual position of preventing a murder, rather than solving one. Next comes upheaval and suspense when the daughter of one of a group of old school chums announces she’s marrying her dad’s bestie. Then one of the guys gets blowed up real good in a boat belonging to another, raising questions as to who was really the target, along with the usual tangle of motives and suspects.
Then we get a murder among the circle of friends and supporters of an exiled African president who is angling to get back in power, unseating his brother what done him out of the top dog spot. Besides the basic whodunnit, part of the suspense here is whether we should root for him to return home, or if his brother may actually be the lesser of two evils. Next comes the surprise of Marc Ruchmann, who co-stars in the comedic mystery series that was reviewed here last week, “Family Detective”, getting bumped off in the first five minutes. His character wanted to sell the family glove factory, despite the objections of his domineering mother. The conflict opens up a can of worms over Catholic/Protestant enmity that has long divided the community. Naturally, that sets up both sides to be zinged by atheist Marleau’s delightfully (to us, not them) caustic wit.
A local annual dance festival faces derailment when one of the organizers involuntarily becomes permanently horizontal (betcha can’t get more euphemistic that!). The diva who runs the show winds up in the middle of a swirl of family psychodrama that may, or may not, explain the murder du jour. This one is arguably the soapiest of the lot. That’s followed by the killing of a rather bitchy, but well-intentioned, social worker who’s setting up a lakeside center for troubled youth. Character and conscience can come from canoeing, supposedly. This foils the plans of a neighboring hotelier to salvage his failing business by offering aquatic activities that would have required owning that same chunk of primo shoreline.
Number nine revolves around an old monastery, now being run as a trade school for young adults with problematic histories. It’s overseen by an ancient quasi-religious order of good Samaritans called the Companions of the Work. But if all went smoothly, there wouldn’t be a murder to solve, would there? The victim is an aspiring locksmith whose efforts draw the wrong kind of attention. In the season finale, a murder occurs in a town bubbling over with protests. They’ve long thrived on the ferry that connects them to the opposite shore of a lake. But a rich guy wants to build a bridge that would replace it, speeding up thru traffic at the expense of all the local merchants who rely on the wait times for much of their business.
As regular readers know, Marleau is one of my favorite characters among all the Eurofare I’ve covered in the past decade, or so. Even so, I encourage you to spread out the viewing of these ten 90-minute episodes. Her singularly entertaining shtick can lose some of its entertainment value when received in too many back-to-back doses. There’s no downside to waiting, since each crime takes her to a new locale with a different cast of cops and residents. You don’t need to recall the details of what she done before to enjoy what she’s doin’ now.
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
CAPTAIN MARLEAU, premieres May 26, 2026 in the U.S. and Canada on MHz Choice.