Engrenages (Spiral, France 2005-2020)

Adieu Engrenages! After 86 episodes spread over 16 years, my favourite TV series has come to an end. I’m not going to spoil the ending since all 86 episodes are on iPlayer in the UK and I’m sure there are still fans working their way through Series 8. I wrote about Engrenages when Series 5 ended in the UK in 2015. I’ve only followed the show since Series 5 so I can’t claim fandom as such. With all the episodes available, however, I have gone back to look at the opening episode. The change in the appearance of the actors over 15 years is quite remarkable. It looks to me as if the show must have been gruelling to work on – they look so fresh-faced and young in 2005. Nick Lacey has suggested to me that the shooting style changed after Series 1, possibly because it was a surprise hit and the makers then felt that they had a chance to re-envision the approach. In fact it was an enormous hit that perhaps put pressure on the production team.

I’m not going to repeat my 2015 post here and I will try to go back and watch the other series I’ve missed. Here I simply want to offer an observation about the final series. The long-running cop show has been a feature of US TV for as long as I can remember. In the 1950s Jack Webb starred in 276 episodes of Dragnet, in the 1980s Hill Street Blues lasted 144 episodes and Cagney & Lacey lasted 126 episodes. These were all forms of the police procedural deploying generic conventions not so different from those of Engrenages. Similar shows were produced in the UK and IMDb suggests that there were nearly 800 episodes of Z Cars between 1962 and 1978 – but nearly two thirds were wiped by the BBC. I’m most interested in the concept of ‘seriality’, the idea that that all the episodes in one series are constructed around a single primary crime fiction narrative. All the previous cop shows had recurring elements each week which were subordinate to the single narrative ‘episode story’. American TV developed the idea of a ‘narrative arc’ covering an entire season, sometimes with a ‘season finale’, but I don’t think it was until the early 2000s that the genuine serial form emerged especially in European crime dramas. I haven’t watched US TV for several years and I’ve never seen any of the US cable shows which developed the ‘long form narrative’ so I’m not making any comparisons here, except to note that US shows have generally had much longer ‘seasons’, with more than twenty episodes on occasions. For me the changes came with Nordic crime fiction drama serials such as The Killing and The Bridge. The Killing serial 1 was the key change for me with its twenty episodes of 57 minutes when it ran in 2007 in Denmark, but subsequent serials 2 and 3 both ran for ten episodes. Ten episodes seems about right to sustain interest. Engrenages has shifted from eight to twelve and then back to ten episodes for Serial 8. I’m interested here in how the narratives have been constructed across eight serials and in particular I want to investigate the principal recurring characters or rather ‘character functions’ across the serials.

The two central characters are Laure Berthaud (Caroline Proust) and ‘Gilou’ Escoffier (Thierry Godard) with Joséphine Karlsson (Audrey Fleurot) as the only other ever present across every episode (though Gilou is missing from one). Laure is the leader of a local crime team – the equivalent of a CID team from a local police station in the UK and Gilou is one of her two deputies in a total team of around five. Joséphine is an ambitious and rule-breaking avocat who appears in court but because the French judicial system is different, she doesn’t really correspond to an English barrister. Joséphine always has a sparring partner, initially Pierre Clément (Fregory Fitoussi) and latterly Éric Edelman (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing). For the first seven serials the ‘Investigating Judge’ (not that dissimilar to the District Attorney in the US or the Procurator Fiscal in Scotland) is Juge Roban (Philippe Duclos) but in the final serial he has retired and Juge Lucie Bourdieu (Clara Bonnet) replaces him. As a young woman, Juge Bourdieu is a possibly disruptive figure as we will see. Finally we have the characters who fill other senior police roles. The most consistent of these is Commissaire Brémont (Bruno Debrandt) who heads a Serious Crimes Unit – he is also the father of Laure’s baby daughter in the later episodes. Also in the later episodes, Laure has a new local boss, Arnaud Beckriche (Valentin Merlet) and a new deputy, Ali Amrani (Tewfilk Jallab).

I’m going to refer to the last episode here, but I think my comments will also refer to earlier episodes. My feeling is that Engrenages, as fits the various meanings of the title – gears, gearing, cogs, connections etc. – is constructed like a kind of whirling dance, a bit like one of those Scottish country dances where couples take part in what are effectively ensemble dances where first you are all together but at various points you pair off with someone else and at other times dance in a group. This may sound crazy but bear with me. The characters outlined above all work in the policing and judicial systems and by necessity they have to have relationships with each other to do their jobs. But there is also another set of characters, usually changing for each serial, the criminals. In Serial 8 there are three criminal groups – a gang based around a father and son, a drug smuggling operation and a group of of young Moroccan migrants aged under 14 who are used for ‘minor’ crimes by various parties.

My conception of the Serial 8 narrative would be interweaving pairs of characters. Laure holds the whole narrative together because she has working relationships with most of the other characters. Her problem throughout the serial is her long-standing relationship with Gilou. He is now in prison as a result of his ‘unconventional’ policing methods and his refusal to ‘name names’ – he takes the rap for colleagues. In the serial he gets out of prison as part of a deal to become a ‘plant’ in the gang of a major criminal. Nobody must know he is undercover so Laure is not supposed to know or to attempt to see him. But she still cares for him, can she keep away? What is worse is that Gilou is working for Brémont. Laure still has her job to do and in the past she would be working closely with the investigating judge. But the new judge doesn’t trust Laure and therefore Laure finds herself having to work through her boss – who then complicates things by getting involved in a sexual relationship with Lucie. Since she doesn’t have Gilou at hand, Laure finds herself working more closely with Ali (who unbeknownst to her is seeking to join another team in a promotion). Finally, Laure will once again become involved with Joséphine since she becomes the lawyer for the young Moroccan boy who Laure’s team have found is a suspect/witness in the death of another young Moroccan. It is this case that will allow Laure to become involved in the much bigger investigation which involves drug smuggling and the gang that Gilou is now part of. But in doing so she will find herself potentially at odds with Brémont’s Major Crime Unit and the Drugs Squad, not to mention the Armed Response Unit if the big showdown comes. Laure can’t pick and choose which aspects of the investigation to focus on, the investigating judge makes those decisions. On the other hand, Laure is very smart. It’s not until the last couple of episodes that we fully understand what will have to happen when all three cases come together and the major problem will be how will the police operation catch the bad guys without arresting Gilou as a gang member. The last episode is brilliantly staged I think.

While Laure is ‘dancing’ her way through encounters with all the other characters, they too are pairing/squaring up to their counterparts. Two worth picking up are those between Laure and Ali and Joséphine and Eric. The writers found a way to bring Laure and Ali together as teammates just as they found a balance between the impulsive actions of Joséphine and the more calculated actions of Eric. What I really enjoy about Engrenages is how the script is built around the genre conventions of the procedural but is also deeply-rooted in the emotions of the characters. I’ve also found it refreshing that the serials have gradually developed what feels like a genuine engagement with the diversity of Parisian culture. Ali as a character could be seen as simply there to represent the Maghrebi population in the city but his character has several functions. In one sense he represents a more conventional career-orientated younger police officer compared to Laure’s more emotional/committed approach. But he also finds himself caught between cultures and experiences with both the young Moroccans and the dodgy owner of a phone shop. Particularly intriguing are the interrogation scenes when he seems to rely on an interpreter at some points as if his own Arabic is not sufficient to understand the young suspects. On the other hand he is marked by senior officers as a rising star ready for promotion. When he cracks under the strain he’ll learn that on Laure’s team the motto is like the Three Musketeers, one for all and all for one.

The finale, the end of Serial 8, was just about right for me. I didn’t know what I wanted but I’m pleased with what I got. I know there will be different opinions and that’s fine. Nothing will replace Engrenages in my affections and I’ll miss Joséphine as much as Laure and Gilou. But I’d love to see some of the shows that the two women most responsible for the success of Engrenages are producing now. I know that the creative team is very large so I’m just picking out Alexandra Clert and Anne Landois as ‘creator’ and ‘showrunner’ for the majority of episodes. I remember a report of a discussion in New York in which Alexandra Clert was asked questions alongside the showrunner of Mad Men. The event was titled ‘Women, Work and Television’. Clert shocked her American audience by stating: “I’m not a feminist at all, I don’t share the ideology of parity.” Because I don’t watch US TV these days and I gave up on Mad Men after the first episode, I’m not well-placed to make any comparisons. The Mad Men writer Matthew Weiner responded to Clert’s statement by suggesting “Your show is full of feminist philosophy that you take for granted, which is that these women have jobs” and that this was possibly a case of a different generation i.e. Alexandra Clert was taking for granted what other women had fought for. I don’t think this is an explanation. French and American culture are simply different. There is a great deal to think about in Engrenages. I’d better try and watch those early serials before I come to any conclusions. I’ve also just discovered a very interesting take on the show’s representation issues, especially its depiction of ‘peoples of colour’ which points out how over 15 years France has changed considerably. How has Engrenages responded? There is work to do.