As guiltily enthralling as your neighbours having a screaming row in their back garden, unaware that you’re peeking through a hole in the fence, BBC Four’s French police drama series Spiral is not exactly enjoyable; it’s hard to even define it as entertaining. Yet once you start watching, it’s increasingly difficult to stop.
‘There’s no room for mavericks on the bench,’ corrupt, lizard-like director of public prosecutions Machard (Dominique Daguier) warns Judge François Roban (Phillipe Duclos) at one point – the reason presumably being that the entire French justice system is already overcrowded with them. Police Captain Laure Berthaud (Caroline Proust) and her team – particularly Lieutenant Gilou Escoffier (Thierry Godard) – seem unable to conduct their investigation into the murder and mutilation of young girls by the titular Butcher of La Villette without stepping over the line.
Having driven a suspect to an epileptic fit by screaming relentlessly into his face and then goading him in his hospital bed about the size of his genitals (‘It’s a scallop – a tiny scallop,’ says Laure; ‘I’m going to call you “Little Dick”,’ adds Gilou), they drag him up some stairs, tear up prized photographs of his family and scream at him some more – all in the line of duty. Gilou even bribes the world’s deepest-voiced prostitute with cocaine to take part in an identity parade to nail him. But hey, whatever it takes to, er, crack the case, right?
Even the more gentile Judge Roban is not averse to bending the rules in his quest to prove the corruption of Mayor of Villedieu Didier Courcelles (Nicolas Moreau). To obtain a warrant he suspects the treacherous Machard will not grant him, Roban simply faxes the prosecutor a blank sheet of paper and then blames the machine for not working properly. And just in case his resemblance to that other blue-eyed, white-haired, cerebral criminal investigator Inspector Morse has fooled viewers into believing the judge is somehow nicer than the brutal police officers he presides over, Episode 4 finds him standing over the body of his elderly and ailing mother with a pillow in his hands – and the kind of comfort he’s offering is the coldest possible.
A lack of warmth is perhaps a criticism that could be levelled at Spiral – the only people who could find a shred of empathy with the programme are probably serial killers or corrupt cops themselves – but that’s an irrelevance; this isn’t that kind of programme. It sneers at empathy and drinks beer from bottles opened with a gun (an incredible trick demonstrated by Gilou) rather than supping the milk of human kindness. It’s the kind of programme where a man starting an incestuous affair with the daughter he never knew he had is treated as light relief for the world’s best-looking barristers (the Mulder and Scully-a-like duo of Pierre Clement and Josephine Karlsson, played by Gregory Fitoussi and Audrey Fleurot) to investigate while we take a breather from the ever-complicating principal storylines.
However, no respite is on offer. The show simply stares at you from the television screen, daring you to look away before it does; and despite the sordid, uncomfortable, dirty feeling you’re left with afterwards, it’s impossible to do so. Spiral remains sickeningly watchable.
Airs at 9pm on Saturday 9th April 2011 on BBC Four.