Maigret (TV Series) Maigret and the Mad Woman (1992) User Reviews

Maigret and the Mad Woman

[Prismark10 · 7/10 · 2 March 2023]

Madame Antoine seeks out Maigret. She thinks that someone is following her. Also breaking into her apartment while she is out and moving things.

Maigret promises to go and visit her the next day. Others in his department dismiss the old woman as mad.

Maigret has cause to visit Madame Antoine's apartment. She has been strangled.

It seems someone was entering her apartment after all but who? Maigret is sure that it must be someone who knew the old lady, could it be a relative? Her niece is a middle aged masseuse who only has a need for a man for one thing.

One of Madame Antoine's late husband was an inventor who ran the ironmongery section of a department store.

Maybe it was something he had once invented that was of interest. Maigret finds residue of gun oil.

There certainly were several interesting characters in Madame Antoine's circle. Maigret also feels guilt for the old lady's death. However when confronting a fat balding gangster. It seems Maigret also signed a death warrant for someone else.

A good episode, the kind that explores the seedy underbelly of Paris, which was right up Simenon's boulevard.

Acting masterclass from Gambon & Co

[Tony-Holmes · 9/10 · 22 September 2022]

The other review presently on IMDB is by 'ctyankee', presumably saw it in America? That review says "did not like the outcome" - in that one of the principal characters, who helped set up the crime, appears to walk out of Maigret''s office scot-free at the end.

This I think misunderstands the French legal system, in which an examining magistrate would have reviewed the reports, and may have decided to press charges. We don't see this, as the run-time is occupied with Maigret getting into the heads of those involved, and gradually piecing together what must have occurred.

It's a nice episode, more great acting from Gambon, as Maigret, who puts over the brooding thought processes really well (the books make this a real feature, but the TV shows have much less time!), and his own self-doubts with Mme Maigret at the end, when he wonders if he could actually have prevented the 2 deaths. But there's great casting with his team, too, a world-weary Lucas, and Lapointe, who is becoming more street-wise as these 2 series evolve.

That review wonders why one of the criminals is apparently allowed to go free, but the Simenon books quite often have Maigret sympathising with the characters he encounters, in this case a sad lonely woman, getting old but clinging to a young scumbag for company, and allowed (initially, anyway) to plod back out into the Paris suburbs to try and scrape a living.

I did not like the outcome of this episode.

[ctyankee1 · 8 December 2014]

The man that plays Maigret the cop is a good actor. I did not the outcome of this episode.

An old woman goes to the police saying someone has been in her apartment and her stuff is moved around and this has happened many times. They don't believe her they think she is nuts. She wants to speak with Maigret who does not believe her either.

Soon after that she is found dead in her apartment. It seems the old lady's husband was an inventor and her niece helped her live in boyfriend steal the invention.

The niece planned the theft, her aunt was murdered, she helped hide the invention but nothing happens to her. Her boyfriend is murdered and believed killed by a gangster and no one goes to jail for murdering the aunt over a stupid invention. No justice in this episode.

Like many police stories, killers and their accomplices are like cry babies. They justify why they had to kill someone and they either get a lot of sympathy and no charges or a lenient sentence or no jail time at all.

Evil reins in this time and age.