Of course if you're a French prosecutor and your car breaks down and you're stung and allergic to bees, you have to stay in Villefranhce awaiting repairs, because now you're stuck. But in this case, it's up to prosecutor Franck Siriani to stay put and check things out in Villefranche.
It's not exactly A Bad Day at Black Rock, it's more like Never A Good Day in Villefranche. Sunshine doesn't seem to break through, the homicide rate is so high that no one seems to live a natural life span. Actuarially, it's a very bad risk to write life insurance policies in the place. Their homicide rate clocks in at six times the French average. The prosecutor says every time you open a door in Villefranche there's a body behind it. The place is a French Bermuda triangle.
Add to this a four-person constabulary lead by a distracted young woman, and you have the #MeTooMovement advancing females who wear their gun outside their pants for all the honest world to see. But unlike in Spiral, the police here carry their weapons low on the leg, gunslinger style. Even the probationary officer. Camille. gets a weapon. In fact, the whole town is armed to the teeth, and they're all crack shots with a rifle, especially the women whose windows open.
Villefranche reminds me of the series Fortitude, without the ice. Add trees. Lots of trees. When you get to the start of Season 2 there's a flashback to 57 B.C. Folks have been dying mysteriously in this place ever since the Romans set foot in the forest and tried to build a road. The place was supposedly a sacred burial ground for the Celts.
The series is called Dark Spot in English, Zone Blanche in French. There is no church in Villefranche, and the cell phone reception is spotty at best. There is a roadhouse called EL DORADO, with the first O not lit. Something like HOT L.
The dialog is dubbed in English, but still best watched with subtitles. For some reason, Laurène's rank comes out as major, despite being called captain. Laurèn's played by Suliane Brahim, a 40-something French actress who looks younger when she's not looking worried, which is most of the time. The captain has a young adult daughter, Cora, from either a marriage, or a relationship, but the father is not in the story. The tale doesn't go there.
Laurèn is missing the fourth and fifth fingers from her left hand. She tells the prosecutor Siriani that it was a hunting accident. This of course is not believed, and eventually revealed to have resulted from her being kidnapped in the woods 20 years by someone, or something, unknown.
The rest of the police force is rounded out by someone whose nickname translates as Teddy Bear, from the French Balou, who is a bear of a man, fully bearded. Then there's Hermann, the oldest of the unit, who loves fishing and smoking very thin cigarettes.
The mayor of Villefranche, Bertrand Steiner, is a hunk who has a past with the captain. And a bit of a now. No one seems to be happily married in Villefranche. The mayor and the police force are housed in the same building.
The Steiner family is the prototypical wealthy family that seems to run the town. Their machinations play heavily into the story-line. For such an apparently small place, the town has a full-size Olympic swimming pool and a hospital that seems quite large and up-to-date.
The Steiners, led by the patriarch Gerald and former mayor—Bertrand's father—are clearly up to no good. Their machinations become the subject of Season 2.
The doctor for the town is a woman, Leila, who is portrayed as a bit of a party girl, but not one we see partying. Leila makes house calls, and does the autopsies. And like any pathologist, she knows everything once she's examined the corpse. And sometimes the corpse is quite old.
The main story-line during the first season revolves around the mayor's missing daughter, Marion. She's been gone now for eight months. The mayor's marriage is rocky, and no one in the town ever seems too happy. There are closet homosexuals to round out the demographics. In this era, you've got to have them too.
Each episode in the first season is a complete sub-story in itself. And my God, the things that happen in this little place in the neck of the woods, somewhere near the Belgium border.
Episodes 7 and 8 finally get to Marion and what happened to her. Episode 8 ends violently, with quite the surprise. But you know the lead character, Laurèn not going to die, is she? Season 2 of course opens with her in it, but how she recovered is murky. Very murky.
Is there really a horned woodsman in the woods?
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