Saw this on the UK Talking Pictures channel, who last year showed all 4 series of Maigret (Rupert Davies), originally early 60s BBC, and quite a cult show back then.
This French version with Bruno Cremer in the lead is a bit of an acquired taste, for those of us used to Davies or Gambon starring, but he's a pretty good interpretation of the book Maigret, sometimes sympathetic to a witness (or a criminal he knows well?!) and likes a little joke too.
This story has a fading family, clinging on to past glories - a biscuit firm started in 1817 - but close to bankruptcy, and needing new money by marriage. One night the head man in the business is shot, and the family say they heard nothing, and there are clues to a burglary.
The family are strangely obstructive, so Maigret gets some clues from a nearby bar - where the biscuit workers have lunch - and from a drunken bargee, says the lights had been on, and there were two shots, not one.
A further clue is the dead man (the MD now) and his limp brother had a sister, cut out of the inheritance, and said to be dead. She's actually alive, his team track her down, and find her in a Lesbian club (THAT part of the plot wasn't included in the Davies version, the BBC must have thought 60s Britain wasn't ready for that sort of excitement, the 60s hadn't been Swinging enough??!).
Gradually he works out what sort of family argument must have happened, and that the dead man hadn't died in his own bed (a monogrammed sheet helps with that). There is a running joke in this episode, he never seems to have matches to light his pipe, but one oddity is that Lucas - his constant assistant in all the books - is yet again missing! The plot is also padded out with an interfering Magistrate (the French system has an investigating magistrate overseeing important cases) who wants to believe the burglary story -- but has to be firmly told that burglars don't carry guns, plus why would a burglar have broken a window to get in, when he could have opened a ground-floor door?
This French version with Bruno Cremer in the lead is a bit of an acquired taste, for those of us used to Davies or Gambon starring, but he's a pretty good interpretation of the book Maigret, sometimes sympathetic to a witness (or a criminal he knows well?!) and likes a little joke too.
This story has a fading family, clinging on to past glories - a biscuit firm started in 1817 - but close to bankruptcy, and needing new money by marriage. One night the head man in the business is shot, and the family say they heard nothing, and there are clues to a burglary.
The family are strangely obstructive, so Maigret gets some clues from a nearby bar - where the biscuit workers have lunch - and from a drunken bargee, says the lights had been on, and there were two shots, not one.
A further clue is the dead man (the MD now) and his limp brother had a sister, cut out of the inheritance, and said to be dead. She's actually alive, his team track her down, and find her in a Lesbian club (THAT part of the plot wasn't included in the Davies version, the BBC must have thought 60s Britain wasn't ready for that sort of excitement, the 60s hadn't been Swinging enough??!).
Gradually he works out what sort of family argument must have happened, and that the dead man hadn't died in his own bed (a monogrammed sheet helps with that). There is a running joke in this episode, he never seems to have matches to light his pipe, but one oddity is that Lucas - his constant assistant in all the books - is yet again missing! The plot is also padded out with an interfering Magistrate (the French system has an investigating magistrate overseeing important cases) who wants to believe the burglary story -- but has to be firmly told that burglars don't carry guns, plus why would a burglar have broken a window to get in, when he could have opened a ground-floor door?
