Barry Didcock’s TV review: Baptiste, BBC One
One of the upsides of the so-called Third Golden Age of Television – yup, that’s what we’re living in apparently – has been the return of the anthology series. The much-garlanded American Crime Story is just one example, but a notable British version is The Missing, written by brothers Jack and Harry Williams and a winning blend of modern fears (the abduction of children) and modern film financing techniques (both series were set and filmed in Europe and had oodles of co-production money from the relevant territories).
Turning to another venerable staple from previous TV golden ages, the spin-off, the Williams brothers have now concocted Baptiste, named for Julien Baptiste, the dogmatic French detective who was the only constant in both series of The Missing so far and also one of its undisputed highlights. He’s played by Franco-Turkish actor Tchéky Karyo, who joins Killing Eve’s Danish actor Kim Bodnia in that very select group of European actors who have made a name for themselves on this side of the Channel.
Last Sunday’s first episode started well and initially promised much. Tom Hollander was listed in the credits – always a good sign – and a grisly and vaguely fetishistic murder involving shells and plastic bags in the opening scene hinted at exactly the right kind of kinky skulduggery we like in our crime dramas.
That killing took place on the Kent coast, but the action was set in Amsterdam, where Baptiste was living with English wife Celia (Anastasia Hille) following his successful operation to remove a brain tumour. Also in Amsterdam was former drug addict daughter Sara (Camille Schotte), who had cleaned herself up and was now a doting mother. The cosy domestic set-up was interrupted when Baptiste was asked to help Antwerp businessman Edward Sutton (Hollander) find his niece, an Amsterdam sex worker whose disappearance may have had something to do with a mysterious and rarely-seen Eastern European gangster. Think Keyser Soze, but Romanian.
But the good feelings didn’t last. Hokey dialogue, clumsy exposition, even clumsier foreshadowing and a too-easy-to-guess plot development half way through meant that with five minutes to go I had already filed Baptiste in the mental folder marked ‘Thus far and no further’, the one for drama series in which I’ve failed to get beyond episode one. And then came a final scene in which Hollander, returning empty-handed to his home in Antwerp, opened the door to his creepy basement and the whole thing turned on its head. In a good way. So yes, I will be watching next week.
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