TV DRAMA SPIRAL Something like CSI directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Spiral – Series 5


Clever but malheureusement pas ma phrase. @samwoolaston Guardian TV critic, way back in  July 2006. Not quite Godard exactly but it’s reads well. Could be ‘by someone like J-LG’. (Hooray got Godard into another post!).


He said:


(Woolaston, not Godard)

…a cool, dark French detective series, something like CSI directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It’s in that slightly coloured-in black and white. If it was a cigarette, it would be a Disque Bleu.

Someone’s been raped, someone else hasn’t, a couple of people are dead, a handicapped boy’s gone missing, a guy in jail gets a screwdriver through the heart, two other people have unhappy sex in a lonely hotel room. The cops are very French, very beautiful, moody, jealous and miserable.

I found the whole thing utterly baffling and slightly annoying, but also a little bit thrilling. It’s easy to see how Spiral became cult viewing.

In The Week on series 5:

AA Gill in the Sunday Times, whose tounge-in-cheek review notes that Spiral has a woman as its lead, “a bad-tempered, existentially morose, drunk slut” – and there really aren’t enough of them on television. He adds that there’s “nihilistic behaviour, mood swings and vomit” – he really can’t recommend Spiral highly enough.

There isn’t a profusion of reviews of the current series. This 2003 Radio Times:


Spiral is a subversive, relentlessly dark drama
–If you think The Killing made continental crime drama cool, you’re wrong…


and about she who plays Laure, now Chief Inspector Bertaud:


Spiral: meet the stylish star of BBC4’s grimy French cop drama
–Caroline Proust plays tough police captain Laure Berthaud – and shares her fiery nature