In July 2019, I saw Rowan Atkinson starring as Detective Inspector Jules Maigret in a 2016 ITV series (episode 1.2, Maigret’s Dead Man) that I saw on WETA UK.   The killer, Dacourt, played by John Light, who as a short man with delusions of grandeur, goes for the “bad” girl dancer while he has a wife and kids at home.

I saw John Light as a top thief who was on one episode of the “Father Brown” tv show and returned for a second episode later in that series.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Rowan Atkinson as a detective.   He was so great in the “Mr. Bean” comedy tv series in which his eyebrows and eyes were so expressive—a great part of his characterization.   I liked seeing him also as a department store jewelry salesman in the movie “Love Actually”.  

The icing on the cake was seeing him playing a dead-pan serious detective.   He played the Maigret character so well that it brought tears to my eyes.   Well-done Rowan!

Maigret Sets a Trap, Season 1, Episode 1, 2016

This is the second time I’ve seen Rowan Atkinson starring as Detective Inspector Jules Maigret on August 20, 2021 (season 1, episode2) which takes place in 1955.   Five women are stabbed to death with what appears to be a pen knife which had to be used twice or more to kill each victim.   The politicians over his head think they could find the killer in the five months it has taken so far and threaten to have a detective inspector from another region take his place.

Maigret is under intense pressure to produce the killer.    As a last resort, he recruits a dozen policewomen to act as decoys.   The killer attacks one of them and gets away.  A most unassuming polite person Marcel Monsin (David Dawson) is eventually arrested for the crime but must be proven to be the murderer without a sure witness.   I was crying by the end of the episode this time for a different reason:  sympathy for the murdered women, sympathy for Maigret’s plight, and sympathy for the killer.

Another character in this episode is the paparazzi who are squealing at his heels at every step, especially the female one (Rebecca Night?) who outwits the rest in getting scoops.   I had a hard time finding out who the female reporter was.  The actress/the character she played differed on different sights.

Judge Comeliau (Aidan McArdle) is the judge who tries to run interference between Maigret and the politicians and is eventually unsuccessful.   I saw McArdle as a psychological strategist getting other people to do terrible things just by talking to them in an episode of Poirot (Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case).  He also played the murderous husband in Ms. Scarlet and the Duke.

Atkinson has done it again as the rarely smiling Maigret!   But you can tell by his facial expressions what he is feeling: frustration at not catching the killer, the politicians trying to tell him how to do his job, empathy for the families of the murdered women, pain at mistakes being made, etc.   Also, this version of Maigret has a wife played by Lucy Cohu which I am not sure all Maigrets had.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin