DÉTECTIVES. “Convictions intimes” (Firm Convictions). France Télévision Distribution. 22 May 2013 (Season One, Episode One). Sara Martins (Nora Abadie), Philippe Lefebvre (Philippe Roche), Jean-Luc Bideau (Maxime Roche). Currently streaming on MHz.

   Roche and Son, a family owned and operated private eye agency, is running on hard time, and Maxime Roche the father, now retired, decides that to update the business – new technology and all — they need to join forces with another firm run by Nora Abadie (Sara Martins), a former French intelligence officer. Unfortunately he does not tell his son Phillipe, and the merger gets off to an obvious bad start.

   The problem is basically this: Rocke and Son being a family-run business, they are too casual – not about their work – but in the office, with a couple of children having had free run of their previous location. It is hard for me to say, having watched only this, the first episode – and at that, one that ends in a cliffhanger – but it is easy to suppose that in spite of some initial antagonism between Nora and Philippe, opposites attract and the usual hesitant attempts at “will they or won’t they” will eventually prevail.

   Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

   Their first case in common is an unusual one. The Roches are investigating the death of a young worker at a nuclear plant, while Nora is/has been the director of data security of the company owning the very same nuclear plant. She decides, however, that she’d better investigate on her own, just in case the Roches discover something incriminating.

   In spite of the seriousness of the case, there is a light touch to all of this that makes this go down easily, and at least for now, I intend to keep watching. Immediately after this series Sara Martins was to go on to become DS Camille Bordey on Death in Paradise, a role I continue to regret she decided to give up halfway through the fourth season.