Streaming on SBS On Demand - SPIRAL series 5 ("Series concu par Alexandra Clert", France 2014)

Spiral (French title Engrenages) is up to seven series.  The latest, having gone out earlier this year in France, will presumably go on BBC4 and SBS as soon as SBS knocks out the English subtitles. An earlier post by Mark Pierce dealt with three major series Spiral, The Bureau  and Fauda.

Mark nailed it with this description: “the constant element is frailty, full-frontal frailty, red in tooth and claw. Not only do events go horrendously awry. The protagonists doubt themselves, their causes and the powers that be they represent. They have reason to. The three series slyly imply that some of our systems of governance might be, if not actually corrupt, at least rickety and bid’able.  In Spiral, for instance, judges, prosecutors, police officers on the beat, detectives, Ministers and their staff, all are persuaded that rules may be bent or broken, lives might be wagered or squandered, laws and those who make them can be defied or thwarted.”

So catching up with Spiral after series 4, when a bomb went off in the station killing Captain Laure Berthaud’s (Caroline Proust) lover it was obvious that the cliffhanger ending would have us slavering for more. SBS On Demand is allowing catch-up. The date for the subtitling says 2016 so it must have been around for awhile. I’m told that I’ve missed series 6 as well.

Caroline Proust

But making do with a binge watch on the SBS On Demand treasure trove brought me closer to up to date. Laure discovers she is pregnant. A woman and a child are fished out of the Seine. The cops in Criminal Investigation - Laure, Gilou, Tintin, DP, Tom (new?) and Nico - are still at loggerheads with their cunning boss Herville. The Magistrate Roban is back. The lawyers Clement and Karlsson are still an item. By the end much has changed, characters have been killed off but the killers of the mother and child have been tracked down. Not without collateral damage. We’ll know more when I track down series 6.

Series 5 won the  2015 Emmy for best International drama.