Streaming series - Captain Marleau: Season 4

Captain Marleau: Season 4 ***1/2 (out of 5) Below is the link to my review of previous episodes of this quirky French crime series with its unique eponymous policewoman:

https://patch.com/missouri/clayton-richmondheights/french-tv-crime-drama-review-captain-marleau

The first of these new issues (originally aired in 2022) opens with a poisoned hairdresser connected to a local theater company with far more tangles among them than in all of the hairdos she’d coiffed. Their current production is Othello, which the script cleverly intertwines with the offstage murder. The second case gives up more of what makes Marleau tick, as she fends off department-ordered time with a shrink, ducking the doc’s overtures while nailing another killer. The third mixes financial and familial motives, both current and entailing echoes of old wounds, among the principals. The fourth stems from the actual killing of an officer in the middle of a town’s annual meticulously costumed and staged reenactment of a Napoleonic era battle, when a dueling pistol’s blank charge was given the old switcheroo with live ammo.

Though some of these might seem to have been stretched a bit to fill their time slots, the scripts still consistently deliver first-rate mixes of suspense and humor. Even so, it's Masiero's personality that makes this series stand out from the rest. The shows are generally low on overt violence and gore, and joyfully spiced up by her eccentricities. Masiero and the show have been nominated for several awards in France. She created a refreshingly engaging character who should thrive with genre fans on this side of the Atlantic, as well.

(Captain Marleau: Season 4, mostly in French with subtitles, streams on MHzChoice as of 7/11/23)