Saw this on the UK Talking Pictures channel, who are showing all 4 series of Maigret, originally early 60s BBC. We're in the 4th series now, and the quality has generally improved, this one no exception.
A rather unusual episode, told partly in flashback, but it was very well done. Maigret is hosting his friend (a doctor) at a small dinner party, and they discuss each other's problems, a patient soon to die, and a condemned man facing the guillotine. The doctor leaves early, to make a further visit to the hospital, just in case. Maigret determines to try and help the accused, even if though most of the case he was little help to himself.
His team reviews the case file, could one of the murdered wife's other lovers have done it, even though they apparently had alibis? And Maigret wonders if the eye-witness, living opposite the house of the murder, had actually seen the accused at the time he was adamant about in his court testimony?
They find that one of the other lovers has just been released from a short jail sentence, for assaulting a wealthy woman (soon after the murder). Mmm, so he has a violent streak? And the eye-witness, Maigret finds that he has a girlfriend, not realised at the trial, could he have been, well, distracted that night???
Also unusually, Maigret voices over the flashbacks, to help the viewer with his thought process at the time, a device that works well. Keen eyed viewers will see that the doctor friend is played by Ballard Berkeley, who later played the dotty major in cult comedy Fawlty Towers, and the sleazy bully-boy was Philip Madoc, who went on to be in, well, hundreds of things, but notably in another cult comedy, Dad's Army, specifically the "Don't tell him, Pike" episode!
A rather unusual episode, told partly in flashback, but it was very well done. Maigret is hosting his friend (a doctor) at a small dinner party, and they discuss each other's problems, a patient soon to die, and a condemned man facing the guillotine. The doctor leaves early, to make a further visit to the hospital, just in case. Maigret determines to try and help the accused, even if though most of the case he was little help to himself.
His team reviews the case file, could one of the murdered wife's other lovers have done it, even though they apparently had alibis? And Maigret wonders if the eye-witness, living opposite the house of the murder, had actually seen the accused at the time he was adamant about in his court testimony?
They find that one of the other lovers has just been released from a short jail sentence, for assaulting a wealthy woman (soon after the murder). Mmm, so he has a violent streak? And the eye-witness, Maigret finds that he has a girlfriend, not realised at the trial, could he have been, well, distracted that night???
Also unusually, Maigret voices over the flashbacks, to help the viewer with his thought process at the time, a device that works well. Keen eyed viewers will see that the doctor friend is played by Ballard Berkeley, who later played the dotty major in cult comedy Fawlty Towers, and the sleazy bully-boy was Philip Madoc, who went on to be in, well, hundreds of things, but notably in another cult comedy, Dad's Army, specifically the "Don't tell him, Pike" episode!