The Break (La Trêve) Season 2: The Broken Detective

Season 2 of The Break (La Trêve) - Belgian noir with a vengeance (in French with English subtitles, on Netflix) - was even better than the first, with a tighter story that made more sense in the end.  It was more grim, far darker, which is saying a lot, since the first season was already on the grim side of grim.

Yoann Peeters is "broken," as he says close to the end of this new story.  He was broken when we first met him in the first season, escaping from the big city and the death of his wife to find some peace in his small hometown in the countryside.  Of course, he finds nothing like that, and the end of the first season leaves him more broken than ever.

He's escaped to the classroom - as a teacher - when the second season begins.  And he's inexorably drawn into a complex, harrowing case by a woman psychologist, Jasmina, who was his therapist in the past.  They also have something of a romantic spark.  One of her patients, Dany, has recently been released from prison after serving nine years for the murder of his girlfriend (that sentence seems a little light, but maybe Belgium and the U.S mete out sentences differently).  He's now accused of  killing an older woman in a brutal attack - he was her gardener - but Jasmina is convinced that Dany didn't do it, and is being railroaded into a confession, just as she believes happened with Dany for the first murder.  Add to that the local police, some of whom seem to have a vested interest in Dany being put away for the second murder as quickly as possible, and it's no wonder that Yoann is pulled out of his retirement into the new case.

But he's still broken.  His instincts are frayed and he has a tendency to switch his conclusion of who is the murderer as soon as new evidence comes through.   And there are suspects and evidence indeed.   Dany's brother Christian and his wife Sophie are high on the list, as are various people involved in an attempt to buy out the murder victim's property to build a road (good timing for us here in the US - reminded me of Trump's wanting to confiscate people's property to build his wall).  Some of the police themselves are not beyond being suspect for the crime, as is Yoann's daughter's girlfriend.

So Yoann the anti-hero has his hands full.  He has almost no one on his side except Jasmina, and even she might not have been telling him the entire truth.   I won't say anything more specific, but there are false starts, different kinds of villains, and all the stuff that makes the second season of La Trêve a grade-A whodunnit.  And the series is aptly named.  On one level, the break is Yoann trying to get away from big city police life.   On the deeper level, it's about the break in Yoann's persona, the breaks in his fractured mind. 

Back in the 1970s, I used to talk about what I termed the "defective detective" on American television - Longstreet was blind, Ironside in a wheel-chair, Barnaby Jones was old, and Columbo was a schlep.  The Break takes this to a whole new, frightening level, as Yoann (superbly acted by Yoann Blanc - all the acting is excellent) races against his disintegrating mind to find the truth.   Does he get there in time?

Binging the ten hours of The Break is well worth your time to find out.

See also The Break (La Trêve): Riveting Belgian Whodunnit, But

 

My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2017

Continuing the tradition - just started two years ago - here is my Top 10 list for 2017,  from who knows how many series I've seen this past year on network television, cable, and streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Acorn):

Honorable mention (narrowly not making the list, for a variety of reasons):  On the list last year: Vikings was on my Top 10 list last year (that would be season 3).  Season 4 was excellent, but not quite as good in previous seasons.  (Season 5 has just begun, and I'm already liking it a little more than Season 4.) Returning in honorable mention: Chicago Fire is still superb, but still suffers from the limitations of network television.   Apples and oranges: Veep is still hilarious, but it's impossible to rank a comedy with dramas, so I put it here in honorable mentions. Same for the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is in an hilarious class of its own. Closest runners-up: Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime): sequels, especially broadcast years later, are always a difficult proposition, but Twin Peaks did this insanely well, literally;  Game of Thrones (Season 7) (HBO): best season so far, we finally got to see the dragons in action; Ozark (Netflix): an original, engrossing crime drama in an unlikely place; The Break (Netflix): top-notch Belgian noir, The Crown (Netflix): peerless drama of the first years of Queen Elizabeth II;  Mindhunter (Netflix) think Criminal Minds, unhindered by network mores

-> 17 December 2017 shoutout to Erased, a charming, very different kind of time travel series on Netflix, which I just saw last night.  It will definitely be on my Top 10 list next year.

-> 28 December 2017 I just finished streaming Travelers 2 - the first season was on my Top 10 list last year (2016) - Travelers 2 will surely be on my Top 10 list next year.

And now the Top 10:

10. 19-2 (final season, Acorn): back on the list from last year, one of the best cop shows ever on television; sorry to see it conclude

9. The Deuce (HBO): a gritty, in-your-face look at prostitution and the dawn of the porn industry in 1970s New York City, as only HBO can do it

8. Big Little Lies (HBO): sly, well-acted, delicious, brutal, and criminal

7. Four Seasons in Havana (Netflix): Cuban noir, based on four novels, about the exploits of detective with a secret life as a writer - you can't go wrong with this gem

6. Narcos (Season 3) (Netflix): 3rd year in a row on my Top 10 list, you can't beat the pace, the realism, and the sarcasm of the DEA-agent narrator

5. Dark (Netflix): there was a lot of time-travel on television in 2017 (12 Monkeys, Timeless, Time After Time, Somewhere Between, Outlander), but this German outing was the best, and wove at least half a dozen major paradoxes into the story

4. The Orville (Fox): the closest thing ever on television to the original Star Trek series, with some of The Next Generation on board with equivalent characters; and The Orville is often laugh-out-loud funny

3. Fauda (Netflix): a brilliant, riveting Mossad spy story, swat-team narrative, which treats Israelis and Arabs with almost equal sensitivity

2. Longmire (final season, 6) Netflix: this series just got better and better every every season, and saved the best for last with a truly satisfying story that tied up most of the loose ends

1. Sense8 (season 2) Netflix: telepathy is a relative rarity in science fiction, and Sense8 did it masterfully and memorably; destined to become a classic which will be watched for decades to come

See also My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2015 and My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2016

The Break (La Trêve): Riveting Belgian Whodunnit, But

My wife and I streamed The Break - the English title for the 2016 Belgian La trêve noir police procedural on Netflix - and thought it was excellent, even great, until the end.   Though even then The Break had its moments.

The story is about a high-school soccer-player suicide, which, of course, quickly turns out not to be a suicide.   Yoann Peeters (very well played by Yoann Blanc), in this small town after a case that went very bad in Brussels, catches this investigation.   The local police are mostly earnest, somewhat bumbling, and by-and-large competent. Suspects are manifold, and the narrative develops with lots of twists and turns and surprises.  [From here on there'll be lots of spoilers, so read on either if you don't care or have already seen the series.]

The power of the narrative comes from the likely and unlikely suspects who are revealed and then turn out, for one reason or another, not to have done the deed.   This is the part of the story that makes it a top-notch, powerful whodunnit.

But a story like this requires an equally powerful, plausible ending.  And though the end is powerful, it opens up a huge pothole in the plot.    Inès, Yoann's high-school sweetheart (he grew up in the area), is a great choice for the villain, since that delivers such an emotional punch to Yoann and the viewers.   She's been Yoann's lifeline for a lot of the story, resisting his entreaties to get back together again at first, and now that they're together again her revelation as killer is emotional dynamite.

But ... why would she, as the killer, have been the one to show Yoann, early on, that Driss (the victim) couldn't have written the suicide note, since he didn't have the written skills?  Wouldn't Inès have wanted the case closed as a suicide, as soon as possible?

We could come up with reasons - Inès felt guilty, she wanted Yoann to investigate the death because she loved him and thought Yoann's active investigation was the best way of keeping him around - but we shouldn't have to come up with motives like that, especially when there was another, much better, candidate for the killer, the police chief, who indeed did do his best at first to close the case as a suicide.

But The Break is nonetheless a riveting 10-episode series, and well worth your viewing.