![]() ![]() (“The Shield,” with its murderous cops, was too hyperbolic and melodramatic to be a good comparison.) Few crime dramas have combined as rich a texture with stories as detailed and arresting along with “The Wire,” “NYPD Blue” and “Bosch” come to mind. Another, more apt, American comparison is to “The Wire,” but “Spiral” has been that show’s equal, or better, in each of those categories. The “Spiral” blend, or formula, is familiar: a well-paced and entertaining presentation of police gruntwork a backdrop of administrative infighting and intrigue, which adds notes of dark humor and the fraught personal lives of cops, prosecutors and lawyers, presented without undue sentimentality. ![]() ![]() With the end in sight, however, the key is lower, less sensational, more twilight. Season 8, whose 10 episodes aired in France in September and begin streaming Tuesday on MHz Choice, carries on a series-long exploration of the need to break the rules in a justice system hobbled by bureaucracy, careerism and politics. “Spiral” may be an unusually tense, granular and absorbing cop show, but it’s still a cop show. They’re not “good cops,” but of course they’re good cops. Their toolbox includes blackmail, intimidation and a disingenuousness so routine it’s like breathing - you can tell they’re lying in the presence of their superiors because their lips are moving. The show’s eighth and final season begins with a shot of Sacré-Coeur, but the camera pans down to the working-class Barbès district, where the dead body of a homeless Moroccan teenager is found inside a launderette washing machine.Īnd the Paris police officers of “Spiral” are cut from the same rough cloth. Tourist landmarks and picturesque boulevards are scant the Eiffel Tower occasionally appears in the hazy distance, like a mirage. The long-running crime drama “Spiral” - its title in France, where it premiered on Canal+ back in 2005, is “Engrenages,” or “Gears” - does not take place in a postcard Paris. ![]()
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