Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Favourite Discoveries of 2014 (3)

Today's instalment of favourite discoveries of 2014 comes from Amanda Gillies.

Amanda Gillies's Favourite Discovery of 2014


This year my recommended new discovery is a DVD box set. It is SPIRAL, a BBC DVD set from 2013, and it is first rate. SPIRAL (or Engrenages in the original French) is a French police series, in French with subtitles, and the box set I watched contains series one to four. I loved it because it was so gripping and brutal.

Set in the streets of Paris, SPIRAL is a very much in-your-face series and its 18 rating shows that it doesn’t pull any punches. The star of the series is Police Captain Laure Berthaud and she is just awesome! In a man’s world she takes the lead and, together with her team, solves some pretty nasty crimes.

If you like your crime fiction a bit on the dark side then you will love this series. Its reviews are pretty impressive and The Guardian’s assessment of it being “darker and more twisted than The Wire” sums it up perfectly. I am delighted to see that Series 5 is now showing on BBC Four.

2 comments:

Little Grey Doll said...

I am a great fan of Spiral as well. There's as much crime and corruption amongst the lawyers and police as amongst the criminals. Love it.

Bluette Matthey said...

Les Engrenages (Spiral) is a gripping Euro crime series. The acting is superb, the action realistic and gritty. It was one of my 'Favorite Discoveries' as well.