La maison de Félicie

Jules Lascours lived in a large villa with his maid and a brace of rabbits and kittens until someone killed him. Maigret nearly meets his match in the maid, Felicie; she knows more than she's telling and he has it rough trying to pry it from her.

Bruno Cremer and Jeanne Henry have a fine time playing verbal tennis as the policeman on a mission confronts the passive-aggressive girl-woman. The film indeed rises or falls on their interaction -- and here, rises it is. He is at turns forceful and sympathetic, while she flips between hostile and vulnerable. If you're an animal lover, this one's for you -- it has geese, sheep, mice, a dog, cats, and rabbits.

For a programme supposedly set in the early 1950s, the village depicted in this episode looks virtually medieval. Filthy dirty, mud everywhere, with every surface covered with livestock of some description or other, including the murder victim's crumbling Bates motel-esque "pavillon", overrun with rabbits, cats, chickens and dogs which crawl all over the inhabitants; and the local hostelry with its sheep and goats wandering around and helping themselves to food. Flocks of chickens and geese fill the streets and a dog chases Maigret's bike on his every journey back-and-forth. The apogee of all this animal mallarkey is when Maigret, contemplating lunch, is suddenly called to the phone in the Postmistress's office and goes there to answer it still clutching a large and very live lobster in his other hand, determined to disrupt proceedings.

Cumulatively this lends an almost farcical air to the events from the visual viewpoint (not least since no-one ever mentions or even seems to notice this mad menagerie which has taken over the whole town); and given that much of the verbal sparring between Maigret and the chief suspect plays out as a father/daughter reworking of the badinage between Beatrice and Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing" as well, this episode plays out as surprisingly funny throughout.

Truthfully, the actual murder and its oddly well-signalled, almost perfunctory, resolution takes a back seat to all this Breughel-esque merriment: but that's fine by me when it results in such an amusing episode, so very well (under)played by Cremer & Co. Well worth watching if you get the chance.

Saw this on the Talking Pictures channel, UK older films and TV. They showed the entire collection of the Rupert Davies Maigret episodes (BBC, early 60s) and are now showing this quirky, slow-paced French one (90s) with subtitles. We've also seen the ITV versions with Gambon in the lead (12 episodes, excellent, 1990s), and the less successful Rowan Atkinson attempts (2014, 15, or so?).

The atmosphere is very French, lots of slow thoughtful looks, and Maigret wastes few words, which fits with the books, as does the actor's rather lumbering figure. And there are subtitles, doubtless annoying for some, but done quite well.

No real complaints re the lead portrayal, except that in the books he does crack the odd joke, and has some repartee with faithful R-H man Lucas. In this however, Lucas hardly ever appears, not even mentioned in most episodes, which is STRANGE - I cannot recall a book without him featuring in some way!

This story is well known to TV viewers, both the Davies and Gambon versions covered it. This one extends the running time to almost 2 hours, and to no great effect, the other ones managed the tale in an hour, or about 85 minutes, and were just as good if not better.

Here the acting is good, the actress playing Felicie is in many scenes, and has to compete with Maigret, she has to convey her own innocence in the murder (other reviews have outlined the story) and also try to conceal what SHE believes is the likely involvement of her boyfriend and lover. Gradually Maigret, as usual, plods about and eventually discerns what happened.

One oddity is that he uses Janvier for some help (one of his team at HQ), however Janvier is played by a different actor to the chap who appeared a number of times in previous series! AND -- as I've said, a grating annoyance is that Lucas, almost a constant in the books, hardly ever appears in this version -- WHAT did he do?!

The first Maigret mystery I read was "Maigret and the Toy Village." My wife had bought it, intrigued by the title, and after reading it passed it on to me. This would be the beginning of a long and enjoyable reading experience that would include reading all of Simenon's Maigret stories and many of Simenon's other novels. So, I have a fondness for this story - a quirky mystery with the young housekeeper Felicie at its center - of which the original title is "Felicie is here." Maigret arrives in a town on the outskirts of Paris to investigate the murder of "Peg Leg," and there he meets Felicie, Peg Leg's housekeeper. It's the repartee between inspector and housekeeper that drives the story. Yes, there's a plot and it does work, that is, the actions and the motives behind them are sufficient to drive the story, to allow it all to hold together. But it's the conversations between Maigret and Felicie that will hold you through to the end. The acting is spot on as Maigret gradually shows a fondness for Felicie like that of a father to daughter, and Felicie in her own way returns that feeling. I wish I could better capture in my description here the almost touching connection that occurs between Maigret and Felicie because it's what makes this episode one of the best in the series, I think.

And while there are some seemingly unimportant characters and creatures that flow into and then out of some scenes (like a rabbit that is seen here and there) it's integral because it's how the filmmakers captured not just the plot of the book, but more important its mood. On several occasions in his novel Simenon refers to this place as a "fairy-tale village" or a "toy village" and so it's clear this locale was different from other towns and villages Maigret has visited. It's a fanciful place and Maigret will miss it when he concludes his work there and must leave.

See this one and I think you'll look forward to seeing it again.

This French series of Maigret stories with Bruno Cremer is one of the best things I've ever seen on television. Although I liked the Michael Gambon British series, Cremer is it! The music, the ambiance, everything about this French series is fantastic. I particularly love the music and the atmosphere it creates. The series appears on a local (San Mateo, California) PBS station as part of their International Mysteries series, which includes detectives from Germany, Italy and in the fall, Sweden, when they will be airing the Henning Mankell Kurt Wallender series. I very much look forward to this because I've read all the Wallender books and enjoyed them very much.

Cremer as Maigret is something not to be missed!