I have now seen all four in the series with Rowan Atkinson, and rate them very highly overall, especially 'Maigret's Dead Man', which was brilliant. But unfortunately, despite the same high quality production, this was by far 'the weakest link'.
What was going on?
Lapointe and Janvier are generally portrayed as such excellent hardened professionals, worldly-wise police detectives, and yet both seemed very badly out of character, incompetent, over-emotional.
Maigret himself is always a highly reflective and focussed character, but his remorse at failing to be totally telepathic went too far, and his resulting poor behaviour towards his wife again stretched the character.
And in the end, the plot didn't hold up so well. Arlette could have told him so much when she was right there in his HQ, but she very plainly didn't tell him a thing, even though she was in great fear of her life. In fact she told him nothing. And he kept saying "why didn't I guess?". Oh really!
Review of Maigret in Montmartre
