PERFECT MURDERS “Un Bon Chanteur est un Chanteur Mort.” France, 19 Decemeber 2017 (Season 1, Episode 1). MHz, streaming in the US, 2020. Isabelle Gélinas (Agnès), Arthur Mazet (Thibaud). Director: Didier Le Pêcheur.

   Roughly translating, the title of this first episode is “A Good Singer Is a Dead Singer,” in which a record producer is having trouble making ends meet. To assist in alleviating his financial problems, he decides that a singer he has had under contract for quite a while would be more helpful to him dead than he would be if he stayed alive.

   Thus it is only a short while before the singer ends up dead, drowned in the producer’s swimming pool. This is an elaborate production on his part, involving drugs, a watch, an automatic lawn sprinkler system, and a lot of nerve. Investigating the case are Isabelle Gélinas, as the senior officer, and Arthur Mazet as the new recruit and her new partner, fresh from a desk job to this, their first case together.

   The series is billed as one covering impossible crimes, but the fact is, this one isn’t. It’s a well concocted one, but it’s more like one to be solved by a Columbo-like character, not a fictional Gideon Fell, or a Jonathan Creek in a TV sense. The two leading characters have a good rapport, but maybe that’s because the male half of the new partnership is still in the learning stage of his career, and he allows the female half to do all of the detective work.

   It also seemed to me that much of the key detective work is done off screen, perhaps to cover over the fact that the case against the killer does not take up a lot of time and effort on their part, and other things are done instead.

   It’s still an enjoyable episode to watch, and perhaps after the “getting to know the characters” episode is over and one with, later cases will afford a greater challenge for them. The series has been on for five seasons, but note that the leading characters in this first one do not show up in all of them.