All style over substance
IF THERE’S one benefit to Brexit, it’s that a certain type of Euro bore has been replaced with another one. Back in the day I grew fed up of listening to people telling me that “you can’t buy bad food in France” or that they “just understand what life is really all about” in Spain/Portugal/(insert country here).
There’s a similar kind of rose tint that affects TV viewers wherever subtitles are concerned and I have to say I often fall for it too. Some of my finest, most instructive hours have been spent in foreign hotel rooms watching telly.
So when shows such as VANISHED BY THE LAKE (C4) come on, with their stunning Provencal scenery and almostcompulsory cigarette smoking, I’m a sucker for them. It’s a classic of the missing-girl, town-with-secrets, gorgeous-backdrop variety in which two cases, 15 years apart, slowly splinter the idyll.
Having left the town when her best friends were murdered 15 years ago, Lise Stocker (Barbara Schulz) returns, now a Paris cop, to visit her elderly mother who has Alzheimer’s. She’s picked an unfortunate moment do so since local teenager Chloé Delval (Charlie Joirkin) has just vanished, barely weeks after the man convicted for the original two murders was released.
Chloé had found something out about that case, in which the bodies were never found, and had even left a message on Lise’s phone before her disappearance.
In a more straightforward tale this might have been the reason why Lise showed up in her old town, although here it was just presented as an odd coincidence that Lise didn’t even know about until Chloé’s mum told her.
It’s one of many that seemed to stack up and stretch the elastic of credibility as the episode wore on. Lise’s mother, for example, has Alzheimer’s advanced enough to believe long-dead people are still alive. Yet she can recall in detail something she saw out of her window a couple of days ago. She also lives right next door to Chloé and her family and Chloé, recently, saved the day by pointing out that the old lady’s house was on fire.
Again you might have thought that this would be a good way to get Chloé and Lise communicating but it wasn’t apparently.
Meanwhile, although things are doubtlessly lost in translation, everyone else’s connections to each other and to the vanished girl are relayed in a fashion so heavy they might as well be wearing signs around their necks.
“I am the village doctor,” said Thomas (Arié Elmaleh), who was also Lise’s mum’s doctor, Chloé’s doctor and an old flame of Lise’s, making, you’d have thought, the information about being the village doctor pretty unnecessary.
“That’s Lise Stocker, daughter of Fed, my old partner,” said Serge (Philippe Duquesne), veteran local cop and talking textbook. Slap the word “noir” on it, call it a thriller, French it might be but it’s still not very good.
In a rather boring finale to MARY BERRY’S COUNTRY HOUSE SECRETS (BBC1) the highlight at Goodwood was a Regency weighing chair. Guests to the seat of the Dukes of Richmond would not only sign the visitors’ book but have their weights carefully noted down as well.
I wanted to know whether this took place at the start or the end of their stay, or both. It would be a good way of telling who’s pinched the silver or had too much cake.