Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, David Dawson, Shaun Dingwall, Lucy Cohu, Fiona Shaw, Rebecca Night, Aiden McArdle, Mark Heap, David Annen, Ian Bartholomew, Jessica Bay, Gillian Bevan, Heather Bleasdale, Christopher Bowen, Alexander Campbell, Beth Cooke, Leo Hatton, Jack Johns, Renny Krupinski, Katie Lyons, Colin Mace, Jack McMullen, Zsófia Rea, Hugh Simon, Leo Starr, Martin Turner, Eva-Jane Willis, Nicholas Wittman, Rufus Wright, Scott Alexander Young.

There have been many actors to take on the iconic role of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Jules Maigret, some have been enjoyable, some intolerable, one has been perhaps ideal in the imagination but none really have ever got to grips with the great weight of compassion that stirs underneath the French Detective’s heart, the great sorrow as well as the discerning humour, for both are such that without either, the man pales into insignificance.

It is that great weight of sadness, the hang dog of time that illuminates Paris fully in the years after being torn apart by the brutality of Nazi rule and the collaboration in some quarters that divided the city’s soul; the melancholy of one man and the grief of a time that refused to heal immediately, this is the world of Maigret.

The big detective case, the glamour of the picturesque has been largely missing from the I.T.V. schedule since Poirot finally aired its last case but in this new version of Maigret, and perhaps despite some reservations that someone such as Rowan Atkinson, renown more for his brilliant comedy than his straight acting appeal, could play the part, it is with great viewing pleasure that was able to capture both the essence of the man and Maigret Sets A Trap the city he called home.

In Rowan Atkinson, the weight of war, of the terrible murders of five women in the Montmartre area of Paris, have taken their toll and middle age expectancy is replaced with the despair that the world has not moved on from the savagery inflicted upon Paris and Europe from a decade before. It is to applaud the excellent casting in a character so bound up in the importance of his job.

With Shaun Dingwall, Aiden McCardle and especially David Dawson as Marcel Moncin giving excellent support to Rowan Atkinson, the further the plot moved along, the more psychologically intriguing the case became.

True detective work without the aid of modern day sophistication, the hallmark of great writing, it is to be hoped that Georges Simenon would be proud of the terrific effort employed by all to bring Maigret Sets A Trap to the television screen.

Ian D. Hall