This was a taut, well written show and one of the better episodes of season 1 of Relic Hunter. Sydney and Nigel have to find the long lost church archives for a small village named St. Agnes Sur-Loire located just outside Paris. Dating to 1789, this archive allegedly preserves a marriage certificate of a young French aristocrat named Guy de Bourdin who married his pregnant French lady but was murdered just after his marriage on the eve of the French revolution. He donated his family's estates over to the local French village. Unfortunately, due to the revolution, the local church was destroyed by fire by the revolutionaries and the priest who signed the marriage certificate, Father Louis, hid all the pre-revolutionary baptismal, marriage and other invaluable church records in a secret cave that almost no one knows about. So, any knowledge of de Bourdin's donation was lost in the chaos of the revolution.
Worse still, the present head of the de Bourdin family who owns the lands that the village sits on, (Vincent de Bourdin) wants to sell the village to a developer and have the entire place torn down and redeveloped into a business park or some other commercial project. This unscrupulous nobleman also has a secret 'relationship' with one of Sydney's so-called partners in finding the records...and he will stop at nothing to prevent Sydney from finding the lost church archives including murder. Treason is in the air again (as it was in 1789) and both Sydney and Nigel need all their wits to both find the long lost church records, establish that the rightful heir to the village, Guy de Bourdin, donated the ownership of the lands of the village to its local people--so the village cannot be re-developed--while protecting their hides. Who will triumph: will Sydney and Nigel perish in their attempt to right a historic wrong? Can good always triumph over evil? You must watch the episode to discover the answer here but the script and acting for this episode in the French countryside was superb. Relic Hunter's season 1 French based settings--The Last Knight, this episode and A Good Year--were simply magical.
As an aside, the late British actor Tony Anholt (1941-2002), Christien Anholt's father, played the villain in this 2000 episode as Vincent de Bourdin.
Worse still, the present head of the de Bourdin family who owns the lands that the village sits on, (Vincent de Bourdin) wants to sell the village to a developer and have the entire place torn down and redeveloped into a business park or some other commercial project. This unscrupulous nobleman also has a secret 'relationship' with one of Sydney's so-called partners in finding the records...and he will stop at nothing to prevent Sydney from finding the lost church archives including murder. Treason is in the air again (as it was in 1789) and both Sydney and Nigel need all their wits to both find the long lost church records, establish that the rightful heir to the village, Guy de Bourdin, donated the ownership of the lands of the village to its local people--so the village cannot be re-developed--while protecting their hides. Who will triumph: will Sydney and Nigel perish in their attempt to right a historic wrong? Can good always triumph over evil? You must watch the episode to discover the answer here but the script and acting for this episode in the French countryside was superb. Relic Hunter's season 1 French based settings--The Last Knight, this episode and A Good Year--were simply magical.
As an aside, the late British actor Tony Anholt (1941-2002), Christien Anholt's father, played the villain in this 2000 episode as Vincent de Bourdin.
