The Madame Blanc Mysteries (TV Series) Episode #1.1 (2021) User Reviews

Will the real Mrs White please stand up?

[bosporan · 6/10 · 25 May 2022]

An interesting premise with plenty of promise, but the story is carelessly drawn and sloppy. It is excruciatingly linear with circumstance and serendipity being the chosen weapons for plot development.

Hopefully episode two will see an improvement.

Very light, but got quite interesting.

[vitoscotti · 8/10 · 21 October 2023]

Finished up "Mdsomer Murders" and the new version of "Dalgliesh". Randomly thought I'd check this out. Kept my interest with a story that had a nice flow building up to the ntense revealing ending.

Very strong casting of the stunning lead Sally Lindsay as Jean White. Little problem with the same supporting characters popping up everywhere Jean goes like clockwork. Also, Jean just meeting Dom Hayes (Steve Edge) literally hours ago forming such a close bond so early was farfetched.

The charm and intrigue were woven together superbly. Wasn't sure if this was my cup of tea but it won me over. I'll definitely continue watching looking forward to the second episode.

Fun Quirky series

[brooksonq · 9/10 · 20 November 2021]

If you are looking for high drama, move on, if you want a light hearted little series sit down with a cuppa and let it wash over you.

It's a fine story, set in the sun, predictable characters and easygoing easy to follow scripts.

Great start but mysteries soon got predictable - although an excellent Christmas Special!

[SunnyDaise · 10/10 · 19 October 2021]

Episode 1 is brilliant - a well paced start in this ongoing mystery arc. I was expecting self-contained episodes, which we do get in later seasons, but this format worked well in the beginning as the 45 minute format is a bit tight for weekly combining crime and non-crime stories.

However this initial standard soon runs out of steam - the second half on this debut run has a very different feel and falls into the same trap as Brokenwood Mysteries et al - the plots become predictable with so many LGBT 'twists' that are not a surprises any more. Worse still, the focus becomes so fixed on sex-lives that there's nothing much new to figure out mystery-wise in the first season's finale. As much as I love Paul O'Grady , especially his doggy show, this inclusion really felt like a box-ticking, celeb appearance filler, and the time should have been put into something more relevant to the earlier style. Unfortunately, the Sainte Victoria youngsters were also uninspiring and later seasons are better without them, and the other departed characters - sometimes less is more.

Thankfully the first Christmas Special was absolutely fantastic, followed by a mixed bag of more one-off stories in the next seasons.

Cheery, undemanding, cozy mysteries ...

[pepegomez65 · 5/10 · 7 November 2021]

... would be suitable comments if these were scripts presented at a creative writing course, but for a program on prime time TV then "amateurish bordering on juvenile" would be nearer the mark.

Mrs White (nobody actually calls her Mme Blanc) arrives in a sleepy French village to sort out the affairs of her recently deceased antiques-dealer husband. To the amazement of the local police, she fairly quickly determines that her husband was poisoned by a serial-killing art thief on the hunt for a valuable ring that her husband had found in a local flea market.

Impressed by her sleuthing skills and encyclopaedic knowledge of antiques, the local police captain puts her on the payroll to help solve the many art-related crimes in the area (and, of course, find the serial killer).

Mrs White doesn't speak French but that's ok because everybody in the village is either an ex-pat or speaks English with an "Allo, allo" accent (with the notable exception of the female police constable whose dialogue has to be subtitled to remind us that we are indeed in France and not Bexhill-on-sea).

Notable among the ex-pats are Robin Asquith (playing his usual role as a dimwit in French farces) and Susan Holderness playing "Marlene" to Asquith's "Boycie".

Each episode follows a similar format: 1. A cattle-prod reminder that the killer is still out there 2. A ludicrous mystery involving a missing or misidentified masterpiece 3. "Character development" of one of the locals 4. The burgeoning romance between the local ex-pat taxi driver and Mrs White (who seems to have gone through the 5 stages of grief before titles have finished rolling)

In order to cram all this into the 40-minute run time, the mystery has to be solved pretty sharpish and so the clues are dropped like bricks with luggage labels attached (or 1 clue, several bricks).

I couldn't decide between a 3 (awful) and a 7 (but a cheery alternative to the relentlessly downbeat dramas that fill the other channels) so I settled on a 5.

Episode 1.1

[Prismark10 · 5/10 · 18 October 2021]

There is nothing like a comedy crime mystery drama set in a warm climate in the middle of a British winter.

The BBC have done well with Death in Paradise and The Mallorca Files.

Channel 5 jumps in with The Madame Blanc Mysteries set in the south of France. It started off slowly as the set up is being established in the first episode.

The series is devised by Sally Lindsay who plays Jean White. Newly widowed after the death of her husband in the south of France.

Jean finds herself with financial issues courtesy of her late husband and goes to France to investigate his death. The only asset she has is a cottage there.

The White's were in the antiques trade. In the first episode Jean finds out that her husband was with another woman that he was passing off as his wife.

A fish out of water drama. Jean needs to get to grips with the locals who only speak French. Malicious gossip and they mysterious lady in red who seems to had been involved with the death of her husband.

There are several British characters handily in the drama. Dom is the general purpose guy who is someone Jean gets to rely on. There is a lot of Franglais being spoken.

The mystery of Jean's husband's death will be dealt with throughout the series.

Surprisingly the series was shot in Malta and not the French Riviera. With Robin Askwith in the cast, I guess it will end in a big confession.