Baptiste and Traitors TV review

The limping French cop is back, in red-light Amsterdam tackling dodgy Romanians
Baptiste: Tom Hollander as Edward
BBC/Two Brothers Pictures
Alastair McKay15 February 2019
The Weekender

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Remember Julien Baptiste? If memory serves, the last we heard from the limping French investigator he was at death’s door, having hijacked two series of The Missing, Harry and Jack Williams’s drama about child abduction and other popular nightmares.

It started with echoes of a familiar, real-life case — a child goes missing on a European holiday — though the story diverged. By the second series it was fully generic, with the charismatic Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) doing what TV cops do: going too far, limping into danger, caring more about solving the terrible case than about his own welfare.

Happily, Baptiste’s brain surgery has been a success and he’s back. It doesn’t take much persuading for him to don the metaphorical deerstalker and hobble back into the breach. “I am not the man I was,” Baptiste warns, Frenchly. “But I will do my best.”

Why? Because a young woman is missing, she’s involved in drugs, and Baptiste’s daughter was the same. And — he doesn’t say this bit — troubled TV cops always try to fix their mistakes by sorting out other people’s disasters.

In a feint, the action starts in Deal, Kent, where an elderly man’s beach-combing is interrupted by a visit from the gas man. We should probably ignore the fact that the gas man looks more like a Romanian hitman, because that would be telling. Suffice to say that when you find a left-handed shell on the beach, it really is sinister. How sinister? The soundtrack plays the Bellamy Brothers’ Let Your Love Flow, so we’re getting dark. Such a relaxing song, such a soothing way to be suffocated.

Going Dutch: Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) tries to help Englishman Edward Stratton (Tom Hollander) find his missing niece in Amsterdam
BBC/Two Brothers Pictures

Now let’s go to Amsterdam, where Baptiste is getting in the way of family life. Long story short: an angry Englishman, Edward Stratton (Tom Hollander), is looking for his missing niece. This being Amsterdam, she’s fallen into prostitution, so: red-light district, menacing Romanians, multi-lingual swearing, strange things planted in tulip fields and a surprising amount of chat about the obsolescence of DVDs and the enduring appeal of Rita Hayworth.

Let’s scroll back, though. Tom Hollander. A versatile actor. Here he’s pitching closer to Corky in The Night Manager than to the Reverend Smallbone in Rev. There is a Thing, too — trans brothels. That’s Baptiste’s jigsaw. Now watch him solve it.

And so to Traitors, which brings us to 1945 and the end of the war. Britain finds itself wrecked, and torn between Conservative complacency and socialism, which worries the Americans, who think Whitehall has been infiltrated by communists. Bash Doran’s drama used to be called Jerusalem, and offers a new spin on the spy genre by placing ambitious English woman Feef (Emma Appleton) in a web of intrigue. She spies for the Americans on the Brits, and then must work out what she’s doing. There are clunky parallels with the present but the shifting of post-war allegiances is an interesting backdrop. To start with it feels under-lit. Feef is flighty, a firecracker waiting to explode, and the idealistic vegetarian Labour MP Hugh Fenton (Luke Treadaway) is a bit too idealistic and vegetarian. Lurking in the shadows is Keeley Hawes as clubbable civil servant Priscilla Garrick. She has librarian’s glasses — and looks as if she knows how to use them.

TV shows to watch in 2019

1/31

Baptiste, Sunday, BBC One, 9pm, Traitors Sunday, Channel 4, 9pm

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