L’ART DU CRIME – created by Angèle Herry-Leclerc & Pierre-Yves Mora

Season Five of the adventures of Parisian art crime investigators Florence Chassange (Eléonore Bernheim) and Police Captain Verlay (Nicolas Gob) has been released, and its first story, Un coeur de Pierre, is an Agatha-Christie-like puzzle mystery that hearkens back to the show’s first episode, which was not Christie-like in any way but did focus on the same character (Pierre Chassange) and the same subject (betrayal).

Pierre (played by Philippe Duclos) is the father of Florence, who is an art historian (like her dad). Florence is also an intellectual reminiscent of Dorothy Sayers’ amateur detective Harriet Vane. In fact, the entire series evokes thoughts of Sayers, though Florence’s co-protagonist Antoine Verlay is a complicated policeman with learning disabilities and anger issues and is nothing at all like Peter Wimsey. Verlay would be better described as a somewhat subdued version of MOONLIGHTING‘s David Addison.

Florence and Antoine are in love with one another, but insist upon not being aware of that. One would think that after five years, that premise would become tiresome, but the mysteries that confront them are sufficiently fascinating that their not being together continues to seem frustratingly natural.

The recently divorced Captain Verlay, a former homicide detective, works for the OCBC (Central Office for the Fight Against Trafficking in Cultural Property) but knows little about art. His friend and new boss Alexandre Pardo (Benjamin Egner) got him the job after Verlay was suspended for calling his previous boss an asshole. In his first assignment with the OCBC, Varlay guards the wrong painting (mistaking the red circle on the white background for the reverse of that), and, after finally tackling the would-be vandal, he remarks with genuine bewilderment: “I didn’t know art made people crazy.”

The writings of Herry-Leclerc and Mora are filled with not-terribly-complicated-but-nonetheless-useful information about French art history (like the bell ringing in Sayers’ “The Nine Tailors“). In Une beauté faite au naturel, the show’s first episode, we learn about 15th century painter Jean Bourdichon and specifically about his portrait of Anne de Bretagne. In Un coeur de Pierre (Episode 5.1) the artists discussed are sculptors Camille Claudel and Rodin. Florence has a tendency toward being phobic in one way or another, and often has visions of the artists she is researching. Sometimes she even converses with them. At the start of the series, Florence’s psychiatrist (whose name has not been mentioned on the show) is played by Farida Rahouadj. For the last two years, Florence has been, for unknown reasons, seeing a different doctor.

In total, there are twelve (two-part) feature length episodes. Although the show has not yet been renewed, a sixth season seems likely to happen sometime next year. All episodes of L’ART DU CRIME can be streamed in the US and Canada on MHz Choice. (in French with English subtitles)

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NOTES

Actors who portray historical figures on the show are sometimes not credited. For instance, we know that Garance Thénault was Camille Claudel, and that Venantino Venantini appeared as Leonardo da Vinci, but the actor who portrayed Rodin is unidentified.

Eléonore Bernheim and Nicolas Gob have also appeared as detectives in the excellent long-running anthology series Murder In…. Gob is Inspector Thomas Keller in Meurtres à Belle-Île (Episode 6.6), and Bernheim is Captain Clémentine Segonzac in Meurtres à Cognac (Episode 7.5).