France 3 broadcasts this Saturday evening “Murders in the Gorges du Verdon”, a new detective television film carried by Bruno Wolkowitch, Barbara Probst and Gary Mihaileanu. Is fiction worth watching?
What is it about ?
In the Gorges du Verdon, Major Thierry Rouvier, close to retirement, and the young Captain Elie Zakine are brought to collaborate on the murder of a 78-year-old man, found on the Castillon dam.
They are soon joined by Chloé Delage, a psychocriminologist from the gendarmerie and who is none other than the daughter of Major Rouvier. A coincidence that does not necessarily make things right, because Thierry and she have a complicated family relationship.
An anonymous letter and a second murder trace the roots of the case to the distant past, which directly concerns Thierry and Chloé. The investigation will indeed shed light on the disappearance of André Rouvier, Thierry’s father, fifty years earlier.
As a teenager, André and his friends had created, just after the war, the “Brotherhood of Capricorns” and it is its members who are now all murdered one after the other.
For what reasons ? What crime had these children committed to pay for it with their lives today? This is what Chloé, Elie and Thierry will have to understand, risking their lives, to solve this case.
Saturday June 24 from 9:10 p.m. on France 3
Who is it with?
To embody Major Thierry Rouvier, France 2 called on Bruno Wolkowitch, an actor who spent many years as Vincent Fournier in PJ. He was recently in the cast of Missing from Mirkwood and Sam.
His daughter is interpreted by Barbara Probst, seen in Missions and The Code while the young captain Elie Zakine is played by Gary Mihaileanu (Alice Nevers, the judge is a woman).
Murders in the Gorges du Verdon also marks the return of Cécilia Hornus to the small screen, more than a year and a half after the stoppage of Plus belle la vie. For his part, the singer Michel Jonasz slips into the skin of one of the future victims of the murderer.
Jonathan Cardonnel and Florence Hautier (La Vengeance aux yeux clairs) are also in the cast of this detective fiction directed by Stephan Kopecky (Joséphine, guardian angel, Camping Paradis) who also wrote the screenplays with Karine Giebel, queen of thrillers crowned with numerous awards. literary.
It’s worth checking out ?
After celebrating the 10th anniversary of the “Meurtres à…” collection last April with the broadcast of a special episode entitled New Murders in Saint-Malo, which saw the return of Bruno Solo and Louise Monot in this sequel to Meurtres à Saint-Malo, Malo, France 3 resumes the normal course of its programs by offering this Saturday, June 24 Murders in the Gorges du Verdon.
In this new episode, Major Thierry Rouvier teams up with young Captain Elie Zakine to investigate the strange murder of a 78-year-old man. They are very quickly joined by Chloé Delage, a psychocriminologist from the gendarmerie who is none other than Thierry’s daughter.
Despite their complicated relationship, they will have to put aside their resentment to solve this investigation which seems to be linked to Thierry and Chloé’s past. Over the course of the investigation, they will indeed shed light on family secrets buried for years.
After having worked on Camping Paradis, Joséphine, guardian angel or even Alice Nevers, the judge is a woman, Stephan Kopecky returns to service in Meurtres dans les gorges du Verdon and joins forces for the occasion with Karine Giébel, a famous author of thrillers and psychological thrillers, to write the screenplay.
The result: a well-crafted plot with many twists and turns, based on magnificent shots of the region’s landscapes. Thanks to its interesting ending, which connects father and daughter to events that took place before their births, Murder in the Gorges of the Verdon surprises us from start to finish.
Unfortunately, some dialogues, a little too explanatory, ring false. The fault probably with the very dense history condensed in the 89 minutes allotted to the collection of telefilms.
If the relationship between Bruno Wolkowitch (Thierry) and Barbara Probst (Chloé) works very well, the chemistry between the latter and Gary Mihaileanu (Elie Zakine) is missing. Their rapprochement, which comes out of nowhere, has a hard time touching us.
In short, Meurtres dans les gorges du Verdon is a solid fiction with an original and surprising story, which suffers from a few flaws, in particular a didactic side which takes away from the spontaneity of the characters.