UK viewers of the excellent Engrenages (AKA Spiral) may already have some idea of what to expect from another French cop show, but while this brutally compelling drama shares a number of common elements with its more legalistic frère, Braquo ignores the inquisitorial part of the judicial system and focuses on the police themselves – specifically a team the SDPJ from Hauts-de-Seine in the western suburbs of Paris who all have more in common with Gilou Escoffier than they do with Maigret.
There’s Captain Theo Vachewski (a sullen, handsome, coke-snorting, leather-clad reincarnation of Jim Morrison risen from Père Lachaise), Lieutenant Roxanne Delgado (sullen and lank-haired, with a partner twice her age), Captain Walter Morlighem (sullen and bald, with a tranked-up wife) and Commander Eddy Caplan (very sullen, with a Corey Hart-like affection for his sunglasses). There’s also Commander Max Rossi, their squad leader, but he’s in trouble – merde profonde; the kind of bother which Tom Barnaby never got into in Midsomer.
The first episode opens with him interrogating a suspected murderer and rapist in a style that certainly wouldn’t meet with the approval of the Geneva Convention. ‘I’d like to see a glimmer of regret in your eyes,’ Max laments to the stripped, cuffed and sneering suspect, ‘but all I see is shit.’ Then he jams a pen in the suspect’s eye and – allegedly – shoves a steel ruler up his rectum.
Internal Affairs (led by Roland Vogel, a dead ringer for a mid-30s Draco Malfoy suffering from acute constipation) are soon all over him like an outbreak of scrofula and have him locked up for police brutality and sexual deviancy.
Elsewhere, Eddy and Walter have donned balaclavas – the Braquo team wear masks as often as they do their badges, it seems – to visit a lawyer enjoying a relaxing spot of S&M. Having photographed him being whipped (‘Hit me harder, damn it!’) and extracted the location of a gangster, Serge Lemoine, they return to the cop shop: a huge warehouse in which their office (prophetically signposted ‘Danger of Death’) contains a well-stocked bar.
Inspector Morse would have loved it, but his brand of policing – i.e. in accordance with the law – wouldn’t really fit in here. ‘You’ve not been cops for a long time,’ Max’s wife tells Eddy. ‘You’ve been hiding behind your badge, trying to make sense of it all, but you’re worthless.’
The principal strands of this first series (it originally aired in France in 2009) are the team’s attempts to clear the name of their squad leader and bring Lemoine to justice, using as much hostility, intimidation and swearing as possible.
It’s in this gritty use of language, unflinching approach to violence and laissez-faire attitude to drug use and nudity as much as its Who-put-the-film-stock-through-the-wash? visual style (the gloomy greyness of the scenes in the present contrast sharply with a the blurrily vibrant colours of a flashback to happier days within the SDPJ) that the similarities with Engrenages are apparent; but although these austere police anti-procedurals share a great deal in common (including a compulsiveness to see more – it’s almost as though Canal+ dramas contain a kind of cathode ray tube crack) there are enough different in focus and emphasis for them to sit happily – or rather, despondently – side-by-side.
Certainly, fans of Laure Berthaud – and of cop shows from all over the world – will find a great deal to enjoy in Braquo.
Aired at 10pm on Sunday 30th October 2011 on FX.