Maigret (TV Series) Maigret et le clochard (2004) User Reviews

Maigret & the Tramp

[Tony-Holmes · 8/10 · 21 May 2024]

Saw this on the Talking Pictures channel (UK, old films and TV). They had previously shown the 1960s series (50+ episodes, BBC, B&W) featuring Rupert Davies, a generally acclaimed Maigret.

We've also seen the excellent 12 episodes (2 series) that ITV did (90s) with Michael Gambon as Maigret (terrific portrayal) and the less successful later efforts with Rowan Atkinson in the lead.

This Cremer version is of course French, with subtitles, but they are not too wordy, so fairly easy to follow. Also very French, lots of atmosphere, meaningful looks, thoughtful silences.

I see some reviews refer to how faithful this version is to the books, a ludicrous statement in one respect, as Lucas, his main assistant in all the books I've seen, has almost completely disappeared!

I haven't liked all the episodes so far of this Cremer version, but THIS one is EXCELLENT. Frequent reviewer Whalen is as usual most accurate with his comments, so check that for the plot.

Maigret is intrigued by the case, his team think it's a waste of time, but he wonders why the victim is keeping so quiet, whether his family are hiding something, and why a witness statement (2 guys throwing a dead dog into the river) doesn't quite agree with that of one of the key characters ??

That, as ever, sets his nose twitching, and he ferrets away at the accounts of all concerned trying to work out the actual truth.

As ever, the acting is extremely good, and in this one, the time flies by (not always the case!).

"I told her she only had to cross the Seine."

[garywhalen · 10/10 · 20 April 2024]

Bargemen save a homeless man from drowning in the Seine, but the police soon discover this man, who been living under a bridge, had been beaten prior to being thrown in the river. Maigret investigates this attempted murder, but there few facts and fewer witnesses to consider. The man is in the hospital in a coma. Why would someone want to kill this man? Why does anyone kill anyone? Motives for murder are limited, so of them what might apply here--apply to a nameless man living under a bridge?

"Maigret and the Tramp," the novel upon which this episode is based, is, for me, one of the more enjoyable George Simenon "Maigret" novels. As you read through the novel or as you watch this film two distinct threads begin to merge: Maigret considers the accounts given--the-what-happened-when-sort-of-thing--and he searches for the nameless man's past. Eventually the nameless man becomes known and the witnesses accounts merge, and Maigret knows what happened and why. The conclusion is typical Simenon.

This is a great episode in the Bruno Cremer "Maigret" series and one I can highly recommend. The casting seems perfect. A comment I often use to describe Simenon's mysteries and several episodes in this series is that the best parts are the lingering moments in-between beginning and end. Here, though, the ending--the last 5 - 10 minutes--may be the best part.

Bum Steer

[writers_reign · 6/10 · 24 November 2013]

This is yet another of the 'cerebral' episode of the late 1990s/early 2000 television series featuring Bruno Cremer as Inspector Jules Maigret. I never saw the series when it was televised if only because I don't and didn't live in France and there is no real reason to screen them in England. Several episodes - two to a box - are now available on DVD and accessible via a French outlet in London and this is where I have been catching up with the series. This time around the victim is - as the title says - a tramp, albeit he is no ordinary tramp but actually a gifted and humane doctor who abandoned wife, family, and well-appointed home, for a life under one of the several bridges spanning the Seine in Paris. In fact the solution of the mystery of why he was killed and who did it lies in the fact that he had suddenly 'moved' from his regular bridge at Bercy (where he was, arguably, one of the clochards mentioned at that location in the popular song Sous le cield de Paris) to the next one along. Pleasant enough.