In the hands of Julien Despaux and the other creatives behind Paris Police, winter is prime territory for a gripping crime-noir drama.
“Christmas 1904. We return to a bygone Paris, with its coal stoves and flinty grey buildings, but this time under a winter’s sky. People in the streets are rugged up, and fog obscures the window panes. The cobblestone paving is carpeted with mud and snow, and the sound of choirs rings out from church steps. The ponds of the Bois de Boulogne are iced over, and in the Winter Circus, a giant Christmas tree is lit up with a thousand lights, glowing on the faces of Paris’ orphans,” says Despaux, in an evocative description of the second series of the French drama series.
In the acclaimed first series, set in turn-of-the-century Paris amid a furore surrounding the death of the French President, young detective Antoine Jouin investigated the murder of a young women. Five years later, the series revisits Jouin (Jérémie Laheurte), along with police chief Louis Lepine (Marc Barbé), young lawyer Jeanne Chauvin (Eugénie Derouand), and Marguerite Steinheil (Evelyne Brochu), the former mistress of the president – but in a very different Paris.
Marc Barbé as Prefect Louis Lepine. Credit: Rémy Grandroques - Tetra Media Fiction / Canal+
Season two, says Despaux, reveals “Paris’ colder side, contrasting with the atmosphere of the first season, which depicted a city boiling over with . Its compelling aesthetic, featuring threatening shadows, lurid colours and distorted reflections … plunge viewers directly into the characters’ newfound turmoil.”
Jérémie Laheurte as Inspector Jouin. Credit: Rémy Grandroques - Tetra Media Fiction / Canal+
That turmoil is both professional and closer to home. In the new season, the characters have personal challenges to deal with, alongside the investigation of the murder of an unknown man in the Bois de Boulogne, and the ramifications of a tragic death after the police arrest of prostitutes working on the streets of Paris.
Along with the offices of the police and the homes of our characters, the action takes us into new settings: the holding cells of the Paris Prefecture, the Saint Lazue prison, the woods of the Bois de Boulogne - “Paris’ illicit underbelly, the place where the city goes to satisfy its basest urges,” explains producer Emmanuel Daucé.
“While the first season of Paris Police borrowed tropes from Westerns, with outrageous violence in the dusty streets of 1900s Paris, the second season focuses more on the characters’ inner conflicts. Now we see Paris in the winter-time, with its snow-covered churches and chilly woods. The gothic-thriller atmosphere is heightened with music from composer Javier Navarrete, the man behind the soundtrack to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth,” Daucé says.
Eugénie Derouand as Jeanne Chauvin. Credit: Rémy Grandroques - Tetra Media Fiction / Canal+
“Syphilis – a terrible disease, at the time both rife and virtually incurable. Many died, others hid and suffered in secret. No respectable person could be supposed to catch a sexually transmitted disease, and the attendant shame was fertile ground for secrets and blackmail. Here we have not only a visceral vision of the time, as experienced through these living, suffering bodies, but also a key driver for the film-noir style mystery,” says Despaux. It's a threat that will affect the lives of several characters in this new season.
Like the first season, the return of Paris Police offers a crime drama with many rewarding layers: a murder to be solved amid police politics, a stylish aesthetic that draw us into a gripping interpretation of Paris past, moments of off-beat humour from our protagonists and a strong cast, brought together in what Despaux describes as “a climate ripe for secrets and subterfuge”.
Despaux, Daucé and creator Fabien Nury have - again - conjured up a gripping period drama.
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Paris Police - season 1 episode 1
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