Masterpiece Orders 'Maigret' Remake, Based on the Georges Simenon Series
It's been nearly 30 years since the last episodic television adaptation of Maigret was launched. However, there was a time when the titular French detective from Georges Simenon's best-selling novels was a staple of European television. From 1960 to 2005, there were no less than eight TV series adaptations in various languages of Maigret, including English, French, German, Italian, and Russian, and that's not counting feature films, the earlier of which came out in 1932 and the most recent of which debuted in 2017, starring actors as varied as the late Richard Harris to Rowan Atkinson. The best known to Anglophiles is probably the Michael Gambon-led adaptation from 1992, which aired on Mystery! In this age of remakes, the only surprise is that it took this long for Masterpiece to board a new version, but the anthology franchise is finally reviving the series for the 21st century.
Younger viewers probably have never heard of Maigret, but there was a time when Simenon's detective was second only to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, in terms of book sales. The fictional French "commissaire" of the Paris Brigade Criminelle, Inspector Jules Maigret, starred in no less than 75 novels and 28 short stories beginning with 1931's The Strange Case of Peter the Lett and ending with 1972's Maigret and Monsieur Charles; the most recent English translations came out in 2013. This new adaptation, initially licensed by the production studio Playground in 2021, includes the rights to the entire canon, and the author's estate, Georges Simenon Limited, is on board.
In most adaptations, Maigret is defined by his large and muscular physique, as opposed to Doyle's Holmes, who is always thin to the point of emaciation. He is known for his bowler hat, thick overcoat, and pipe clenched between his teeth. (Rumor is that Maigret was based on real-life French police chief Marcel Guillaume, but Simenon disputed that.) His stories are also firmly rooted in the politics and social structure of the mid-20th century, and all of the adaptations, including the most recent Atkinson films, have stayed faithful to that world, which is why this new adaptation is so interesting.
