Muriel Robin as criminal psych professor Louise Arbus, in French crime series “Master Crimes” on MHz Choice. Courtesy of MHz Choice

The French crime series “Master Crimes: Season One” offers a nice balance among the murders-du-jour, character development and levity. The six 45-minute episodes cover five different cases to be solved by criminal psych professor Louise Arbus (Muriel Robin), police detective Barbara Delandre (Anne Le Nen) and Arbus’ quartet of students she hand-picked for her team.

Arbus had been an exceptionally successful police profiler until she quit a decade earlier due to a conviction she’d obtained that haunted her ever since with doubts about whether they’d nailed the actual perp. That’s why she’d ensconced herself in academia, apart from periodic inquiries into who might have committed that murder most foul. But one particularly dramatic homicide caused her old friend the Chief (Olivier Claverie) to convince her to reenter the fray.