Spiral S3 ep 1 & 2

Well. That was grim, wasn't it? My first mental note was: do not watch this and eat at the same time. In the first two minutes we had WHORES! TITS! BLOW-JOB! EVISCERATED CORPSE IN A BIN BAG WITH HER TITS CUT OFF! The Killing this isn't. God, wasn't The Killing nice? I mean, sure, it didn't end well for Nanna Birk Larssen, but oh to be in a nation so sleepy that mayoral debates are apparently televised every night, where the worst vices the police can muster up are nicotine gum and junk food, and even the murdered takes time out from his killing spree to go shopping for puppies. By the end of two episodes of Spiral, we had another girl in a bin bag (tits yet to be accounted for), a paedophile with a Terry Thomas moustache, several buckets of chicken blood, a small child ripped to pieces by a dog (off camera, thankfully), a corrupt lawyer getting shot three times at point blank range but surviving (the head, people! aim for the head!), a nasty posh lady in a Chanel boucle two-piece and a particularly ugly broach getting done for drunk driving, the judge's bitch-mum having a stroke, the police inspector hating her home life so much she's sleeping in her car, some casual betrayal, a really skanky nightclub, a teenager getting accused of sleeping with her own dad, a shoe-collecting vagrant smoking dope in the park, occurrences of corruption too numerous to mention, one of the most repulsive double chins I have ever seen, plenty of child neglect, did I mention the buckets of chicken blood, entire buildings crammed with illegal immigrants and homeless people, a missing earring, and my own particular favourite moment, an innocent suspect being punched in the stomach by the police until he vomits and then rolled in his own sick. Did I miss anything out?

Being half French, I can help you out with some of the things you might have found confusing. Judges in France, for example, don't wait around for the evidence to be brought to them in court. They take an active role in the investigation, and at the trial they retire with the jury and, unbelievably, direct them on their verdict. They are all-powerful super-crusading mega-judges in other words, and thus favour full hairstyles with silvery highlights. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are similarly up to their necks.

Also, you may have missed the full force of profanity which has been toned down for the subtitles. I can only imagine the meeting at the BBC4 translation unit where they decided how many shits and fucks they were going to allow per episode. But you can bet that when the subtitles say "Get off my back," what the character has actually just said is "Stop riding my arse, you cunt." To their boss. My favourite French swearword has no equivalent in English. It's "bordel", which means "brothel", and can be used in almost any context. "What is this brothel?", "This situation in which I find myself is a brothel," or just plain "Brothel!" when under duress, sometimes supplemented as "bordel de merde!" ie "Brothel of shit!" If we can get the British walking around saying "Brothel of shit!" then Spiral's work will be done.

To be honest with you, I'm not sure I'm going to make it to the end of twelve episodes of this. I'm exhausted already. And we can't even play along with "find the suspect" because there aren't a lot of useful candidates hanging around, wearing knitted beanie hats, being suspiciously good at teaching, or appearing on televised mayoral debates. Plus, no jumpers. I guess it's not that cold in Paris. What did you think?