Life must be filled up

Yesterday evening I watched the very last of the BBC’s early sixties dramatisations of some of Simenon’s Maigret stories. At the end of the episode, Talking Pictures hoped I’d enjoyed the series. I certainly did! Obviously, production techniques have improved dramatically since those days but I found I didn’t miss fancy camera angles or the kind of zooming about which makes me feel giddy. One of the pleasures of watching was how obviously French it all was. For instance, a cop is running down a street and passes a parked row of half a dozen ancient 2CVs. Quite irrelevant to the story, just part of the background. Then there’s the social attitudes. Knock, knock, a visitor arrives. ‘Ah, Bonjour Monsieur. Drink?’ And at any time of day. I also enjoyed spotting actors playing small roles then but who later became famous: Paul Eddington, Arthur Lowe, Joan Sanderson just three of many.

The previous episode had been shocking because one of Maigret’s team was murdered on duty. You could see Maigret’s struggle: rage and distress making him long to catch the culprit and kill him with his bare hands, while he fought for the self-control to behave in a civilised way. He himself was shot in that episode, so in Maigret’s Little Joke he’s off work sick with his arm in a sling and poor Madame Maigret battling as usual to get him away on holiday with *no work*. Hah! As if being wounded is going to stop him.

My favourite character (after Maigret himself), Lucas, has been promoted to Inspector and is in charge of a murder case. Maigret wanders around, not apparently doing much but the ‘little joke’ is that he keeps sending Lucas anonymous cards with pertinent questions on, such as, ‘Why is Madame X lying?’ As usual, the plot is somewhat complicated but Lucas and his patron solve the mystery. I find it surprising that Ewen Solon, the actor playing Lucas, is not a familiar face outside this series. I looked him up and found that he was born in New Zealand and had a whole string of acting credits yet he’s hardly a household name.

Here, on YouTube, Barry Forshaw gives an excellent introduction to both Simenon and the Rupert Davies series, before the episode The White Hat is shown. I have only just watched this, after writing my little piece and find that I agree with everything Forshaw says and he says it better than I have.

I received this from NetGalley and, Woe, the ‘other stories’ weren’t included. I was quite unreasonably disappointed by this because I’d enjoyed A Maigret Christmas so much. The events take place on one Christmas day and Maigret solves the whole case from his apartment, getting his research done by phone and nipping over the road to the opposite apartment block where a crime may possibly have been committed. I’ve never been a huge Simenon fan but I do love all the detail about French domestic life and manners, which a French readership would presumably take for granted.

I’m fascinated by Madame Maigret, the perfect wife who keeps a spotless flat and is forever shopping and cooking. Maigret even goes home for lunch when he can; very French or, perhaps, very French in the past. The odd (to us) formality of French bourgeois life is very evident. It’s interesting to find that the good Madame goes out early on Christmas morning to buy croissants for her husband’s breakfast and that local shops will be open even on a public holiday. It's this kind of detail which I found sadly lacking from the recent TV series starring Rowan Atkinson. But then, even though I only ever saw one episode at a friend’s house, Rupert Davies is my Maigret and Maigret is definitely black and white.