Streaming on Netflix - Rod Bishop recommends BANDI (Capucine and Éric Rochant, France/Martinique, 2026)

The five seasons of The Bureau (Le bureau des légendes) released between 2015 and 2020 might be the best screen contribution to the “secret world” since the BBC’s adaptations of the three John le Carré spy novels in the 1980s.

Éric Rochant, the French showrunner for The Bureau, now offers Bandi an eight-parter set on the Caribbean island of Martinique. The island is somewhat clumsily known as “French controlled Martinique”, or an “overseas region and department of France”. The Martinicans are French citizens and at one point in Bandi refer to France as “the mainland”. Hah.

Perhaps this helps explains the lax customs between France and this “overseas region”. A Martinique teenager is able to move a huge amount of cocaine in a suitcase to Paris, and disguise the contraband from sniffer dogs by using smells from a variety of tropical fruits. One dog emerges triumphantly from the suitcase with a huge pineapple in its mouth. Too easy.

Rochant and his co-showrunner daughter Capucine use a range of local non-professionals as actors. The series took a year to cast and is centered on the Lafleur family of eleven orphaned brothers and sisters who lose their matriarch. To avoid foster care they must fend for themselves on the mean streets of tropical Fort-de-France. 

Djody Grimeau(r) as Kylian

Unbeknownst to his siblings, sixteen-year-old schoolboy Kylian (Djody Grimeau) from the Lafleur family is established in town as the drug dealer “Milord”. He’s already a competitor to the head drug dealer SherKhan (Patrick Trieste) and when Kylian moves from ganja to cocaine he comes into fierce conflict with his family, particularly Annabelle (Ambre Bozza) and big brother Marvin (Cedric Camille). Both view his actions as conflicting with their late matriarch’s strong sense of morality.

Kylian and his right-hand boy Fatso (Lucas Pernock) also have to deal with Kylian’s unstable, chaotic brother Kingsley (Rodney Dijon), whose behaviour keeps threatening to expose their drug dealing.

These six central characters in Bandi are all played by non-professionals. 

Patrick Trieste aka Evil P2

The compelling Patrick Trieste, playing drug lord SherKhan, is also a first-timer. He is rising star in the influential Trap Antillais music scene and performs under the name Evil P. Originating from Martinique and Guadeloupe, Trap Antillais is a fusion of drill beats with Caribbean dancehall, trap, rap, local Creole lyrics, and a distinctly energetic Martinique style known as “shatta”. Trap forms the musical soundtrack to Bandi (local Creole for gangster).

It’s clearly well researched and bravely cast, and although it may sound like other French gang flics such as La Haine (1997), Bandi is on an entirely different scale. Fort-de-France looks small, and it is. With a population of 74,000, it’s a small country town compared with the gang wars of Paris, Marseille or Lyon. What’s significant is the cocaine that comes in industrial sized quantities from nearby Venezuela, and lands in the hands of Martinican school children. 

Eighty percent of the guns in Martinique are in the hands of 14-to-25-year-olds.

Bandi hasn’t had the impact of The Bureau and was not renewed for a second season. Rochant is now reportedly working on Secret People, a new spy series for Canal+, based on five intelligence agents from the US, UK, France, Russia and China.