Maigret is rebooted on ITV. Forget the Singing Detective. Michael Gambon is the French Detective.
Granada threw money into this production just like the BBC had 30 years earlier.
There is more location shooting this time and these are two hour movies including advert breaks.
The first story is to establish just how dogged Maigret can be. There have been over 70 jewellery heists stretching back a number of years in Paris.
Maigret suspects reformed criminal Manuel Palmari who is now wheelchair bound. Palmari protests his innocence and Maigret has no proof. He thinks that Palmari gets criminal up from the south of France to carry out the thefts.
Later Palmari is found dead. It is murder and Maigret suspects that maybe his younger mistress Aline (Cheryl Campbell) is somehow involved.
Having seen the BBC repeats of Maigret from the early 1960s. I noted how some of the stories could not deal with the complexities of Georges Simenon's novels.
No issues here. This lavish production was adapted by Alan Plater. No stranger in taking money from television companies to adapt novels so he can do his own original stories such as The Beiderbecke Affair.
Just a shame that the pace was glacial. Maigret methodically interrogates all the suspects in the apartment block where the dead man lived. It turns out that Aline owns it.
By the end my patience was wearing thin.