I'm using this episode to back-review the whole of Series One of this programme. I hadn't watched the original series from which this detective drama spun off but this seemed pretty much like a stand-alone show from where I was sitting.
Julian Baptiste is a veteran French ex-police detective, now living with his wife in Amsterdam. He walks with a slight limp, is given to uttering Confucius-like philosophical sayings from time to time and uses his considerable experience and dogged determination to follow his usually unerring investigative instincts to see a complex case through.
This particular case starts as one of "follow the money". A ruthless Romanian gang which specialises in the trafficking of young girls has lost 1000000 Euros in cash, stolen by one of their victims and the local gang-leader responsible for its loss is desperate to get it back before his big boss gets wind of it. And when I say desperate, I mean desperate, like cutting off someone's dad's head in retribution, desperate.
From there the story stretches out in a variety of ways, but centres around Amsterdam and for the first few episodes, its red-light district, with Baptiste entering proceedings not only as a go-between for the money and the Englishman with the now headless dad, who the gang believes knows where it is, but also as a special assistant to the local police, where, wouldn't you know it, he has a personal history with the soon-to-retire female police chief. Also in the mix is a retired leader of the Romanian gang, who besides going the transgender route from male to female, has also changed her identity and is now actively trying to help the young girls she once kidnapped and used for criminal ends. Then there's the young woman who stole the money, a snotty, officious, but certainly single-minded English woman from Interpol determined to bust the gang, the son of the afore-mentioned police chief, who coincidentally is now a top-ranking detective and if you think that sounds like running in the family, wait till you learn the big reveal as to who his dad is.
The series makes good use of the Amsterdam streets, although it must have cost a few guilders to recreate the grubby storefront windows where the prostitutes ply their trade. There were more than a few grisly deaths, a frantic daylight foot-chase and a tense late-night car-chase but it's usually Baptiste who Eurekas his way to the end of the bloody trail, with one last twist as to the police informant saved until the end.
While the multi-layered plot had some strands which unravelled on closer inspection, I rather liked old Jean and his instinctive and humane methodology as well as the gritty milieu in which he works. Sort of like Morse crossed with Wallander, it seems like a British-made attempt at Scandi-noir and is largely convincing in its conception.
On the strength of this, I'll certainly be travelling back to the series which introduced the character and forward to the recently-aired second series in his own name, especially as I see they are all by the same writing and production team.
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