Engrenganes (Spiral)

Anyone actually watch or has seen this show...? Watching series two at the moment on DVD, but as far as TV airings go this brilliant French Policier Noir gets shoved out to BBC 4, when it really should get a showing on BBC 2... Mind you, not surprised, they put the better-than-BBC's-version Swedish original series of "Wallander" onto that marginal channel that hardly anyone watches as well.....

Yes, it's French, but no, dont be put off by the subtitles, it is engrossing, fast-paced, complex, gritty, realistic, hard-edged stuff that makes the likes of CSI or NCIS look like formulaic, useless crap by comparison.. It's a brilliant police and legal procedural show which would even have fans of the classic Law and Order and The Wire gasping in awe...

Start with series one, and you get a storyline which is so satisfyingly complex with villains so amoral and corrupt that you really feel like you need a shower after you've watched the show, it is a show that doesn't pull punches and really gets into the underlying corruption of the French legal system and high/low society... Series two almost seems old-skool by comparison, but no less complex or gritty with a main story-arc involving drugs gangs and even more legal and moral corruption... The reason for the English name "Spiral" is, I think, probably to do with the fact that the characters enter into a spiral of degredation, moral corruption and violence which affects their very beings, the cops and crooks are pretty nasty, but I would posit that it's the legal system the series is more concerned with interrogating, and it makes for extremely good drama...

There really are literally no equivalent British shows you can compare this to (our police dramas these days seem absolutely trite and quite empty by comparison, which is really sad when you consider that once we had genuinely great shows like The Sweeney, Prime Suspect and Cracker), and as far as US drama goes, it's really only the US cable shows like The Wire or The Shield that provide an adequate comparison as far as the grittiness and realism goes....

Seriously guys, check this out if you like good quality drama with a harder edge to it.....