TV’s latest, young, hip, French detective? Mais oui … it’s Maigret

A body left to rot under forest leaves, a dagger between the ribs, a bullet fired at the temple – this sort of slaughter is now commonplace on Sunday afternoon television, with viewers barely raising an eyebrow. But there are still some fictional crimes that can shock an audience, prompting letters and complaints. These are screen offences committed against a beloved detective, and they are perpetrated whenever a new version is made.

Fans of Sherlock Holmes, Van der Valk, Arsène Lupin, Marple or Poirot are regularly outraged when faced with a fresh, modernised portrayal. But among the most protective are the admirers of Georges Simenon’s celebrated Maigret novels – and they now have a big surprise coming their way. Their favourite middle-aged Parisian police chief is about to be reborn as a young, contemporary hero.

The first modern version of Simenon’s mysteries has just been shot in Budapest, which doubles as the French capital. Benjamin Wainwright, best known so far for the costume drama Belgravia, plays the role of the formerly taciturn chief inspector. The six-part series was made for WGBH Boston’s Masterpiece strand by the Playground production team behind Wolf Hall: The Mirror and The Light; the chief writer on the series is Homeland’s Patrick Harbinson.

Simenon’s detective of the Police Judiciaire, created in 1930, was a solitary, ruminative figure who solved his cases by applying his instinctive grasp of human nature. His mantra was “to understand and not to judge”. Julian Barnes is a keen fan of the books, but admits they are nobody’s “cosy crime”. “It’s hardly comfort, because his view of life and human motivation is so pessimistic, but I always have a Simenon close at hand,” he said.

While there are few street chases or spectacular denouements in Simenon’s books, time and again they have been reimagined for the screen. Most recently, Jules Maigret was played by Rowan Atkinson, who set aside his comic mannerisms in 2016 to dive deep into the human soul. The ITV show was a sombre tribute to Simenon’s world, although some critics felt it failed to deliver the violent twists and turns now expected of a television thriller.

The makers of the latest show, due to be screened early next year, aim to convey Simenon’s “enduring concern for the essential humanity of the disenfranchised individual”, they say. All the same, Harbinson’s adaptation recasts Maigret as “an unconventional young detective with something to prove”. He is, however, still faithfully married to Madame Maigret, this time played by Stefanie Martini.

At the head of the elite police unit known as La Crim, Maigret is responsible for investigating serious crime, and the producers promise he will inhabit “a vividly realised Paris, not often seen on camera, that takes us from the glitzy upper-class world of luxury hotels and mansions to local bourgeois bistros and bars and the underground haunts of the professionally criminal”.

So far, upwards of 35 actors have assumed the orthodox, low-key trappings of Maigret: a crumpled trench coat, a brimmed hat and a smoking pipe. The French film adaptations began in 1932, but it was the acclaimed actor Jean Gabin who first set his stamp on the role for Maigret’s compatriots, taking the television role in 1958, 1959 and 1963. French actors Jean Richard and Bruno Cremer followed, with Richard appearing in almost 90 episodes.

On British television, it was Rupert Davies who picked up the pipe in the 1960s, taking up a case more than 50 times. In the early 1990s, Michael Gambon earned plaudits for the 12 crimes he solved for ITV viewers, embodying the bulky detective to the satisfaction of most fans in a show that was also filmed in Hungary. But the character goes even further back on this side of the Channel: Maigret first entertained British cinemagoers in the 1949 film The Man on the Eiffel Tower, starring Charles Laughton.

Simenon, a Belgian writer who died in 1989 aged 86, is said to have preferred Gino Cervi, who played the role of Maigret for six years on Italian television. Born in Liège in 1903, the former reporter published his first novel in 1921. He moved to Paris the next year and produced a stream of novels. From 1945 to 1955, he spent most of his time in the United States.

Part of the appeal for television producers must be the extent of Simenon’s output. He wrote 75 Maigret novels, most of them set in Paris, and his chief inspector is the second bestselling sleuth in publishing after Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. More than 800m copies of his books have been sold in more than 50 languages.

Playground has licensed the English-speaking rights to all the Maigret stories from Georges Simenon Limited and is hoping for a lengthy franchise to follow. The company’s joint managing director, David Stern, sees it as a safe bet since “George Simenon’s creation of Jules Maigret holds a firm place in the pantheon of great literary detectives”.