French series Black Spot recommendation. Sometimes, even I can fall prey to the whims of selfishness. I know, I know, you don’t believe it. That I, the great movie sharer, that I, the one true selfless purveyor, nay, benefactor, of film and series recommendations could possibly slip and fall to the evils of selfishness. But it happens even to one such as I. COUGH. Hahah. Okay, here’s what happened. I started watching Black Spot, and LOVED it. I took my time with it, assuming I’d binge, but I didn’t. And after every episode I thought, I need to post about this show – it is so brilliant. So many lovely and interesting things going on here. But as I finally rounded the bend of season 1, I realized, no, I won’t summarize season 1, I’ll summarize one and 2, and thus the selfishness took hold. And for you, dear reader, you were left out, in the non-Black Spot cold… shivering and alone, awaiting the next recommendation… only to have it snatched from your fingertips! And only I am to blame!
Okay – stop that, stop that! Gah.
Hyperbole or no – Black Spot is fantastic. The bare outlines of the show is that a French police inspector with a fairly dark past, begins investigating a string of murders in a town where the murder rate is six times higher than the rest of the country. And it happens to be in a woods encased part of the country that is remote, and difficult to reach. Cell connections are shoddy, compass directions are unreliable, and there are strange things in the woods that really do go bump in the night.
The story of Black Spot (or Zone Blanche in French) is set in the fictional town of Villefranche. It’s located in a wickedly dark, and ominous forest set in among the mountains of France. It’s constantly raining and foggy. Worse, the murder rate of the town is six times the normal average of other towns in France. Is it the people that live here and their weird social foibles? Is it a murderer that has setup shop here and hasn’t left for decades? Or is it something darker?
Major Laurel Weiss has been charged with overseeing this mess, and might be more wrapped up in the causal reasons for this chaos than even she wants to admit. But as she pushes for answers, and works hard to save anyone she can, she takes one step forward and twelve steps back. As the series opens, it kicks off with the discovery of a woman’s dead body. She’s found hanged in a tree which echoes backwards to another previous incident. Oh, and did I mention that the Mayor’s daughter is missing? And other young women will go missing too? Which is why Prosecutor Frank Sirani comes to Villefranche. He is coming to create order, solve the murder rate of the town, and figure out why Laurel can’t get her town sorted out. But he just has no idea of what he’s just walked into.
It’s a great setup. It’s a great set of characters. It’s an intriguing and highly complex set of circumstances. And if there is a weakness here – it’s that too much is going on too quickly. But personally, if found the disarray affecting. Anyway, check it out – which you can, right here– and let me know what you think of the show.
Edited by: CY
