Spoiler alert: this blog details events in the second episode of Witnesses, which airs on Channel 4 at 10pm. To see a recap of episode one, click here.
Perhaps we’ve been spoilt by recent continental policiers, but I can’t help feeling there may be a little less to Witnesses than meets the eye. For now, though, it still scores high on style and imaginative villainy, and outstandingly high on creepy locations (prisons! bank vaults! funiculars!). Coherence, though – not so much.
This series has swung a little infuriatingly between the overly emphatic (I reckon we’re now on top of the fact that Paul taught Sandra plenty of stuff eight years ago, while Maxine’s only function appears to be to ask leading questions) and frustratingly obtuse (who was Melanie, being toasted at the bowling alley? How does Sandra connect Gorbier to the torn-up postcard? How does Paul know Serano didn’t draw the house on the cell wall?). I fear it may prove all too easy to pick Witnesses to pieces in coming weeks, but for now I’m happy to dodge the bullets and enjoy the ride.
The case
The series bogeymen are revealed, and very nasty pieces of work they are too. Greg Serano, your basic thug who killed his wife and daughter, and Kaz Gorbier, dentist, family man and criminal mastermind who favours the abduction, rape and murder of underage girls while dressed as a tautological “sinister clown”. Don’t have nightmares, kids. It appears that Serano and Gorbier are digging up the bodies and haunting Paul. But are they the killers as well? That seems less certain.
Richard LaPlace, we hardly knew ye. A former colleague of show-home corpses Weber and Muse apparently poised to flee for his life, only for the threat of revelations from his past to prove so terrifying that he bumped himself off instead.
Mind you, I don’t much rate the chances of Le Tréport’s finest to crack the case. Not only is their IT prehistoric (as evidenced by Sandra’s travails in accessing Paul’s successful convictions), but one of their own reckoned of Serano, “If he’s in Le Tréport, we’ve had it”. A vote of confidence worthy of a Premier League chairman, there.
The odd couple
That Justin is a class act – last week he described Paul to Sandra as “a pain in the arse”; this week he flipped it and said the same about Sandra to Paul. Otherwise, aside from chatting to a bloke by the show homes and angrily slamming some files on a desk, Justin took a bit of a backseat this week – I still can’t see him lasting the series.
Sandra, on the other hand … Well done to everyone clocking the rogue lipstick – the adulter-y narrative moved on apace, although without anything definitively incriminating just yet. “I enjoyed our few hours together” sounds bad, but not terminal.
Sandra’s OCD didn’t surface tonight, but I wonder if her blanching reaction to Serano’s drug paraphernalia was telling – mon l’enfer de drogue, peut-etre? She seemed comfortable enough with Brice the voyeuristic caner and his weed-smoking ways, but maybe a brush with the hard stuff might explain her abrupt departure from the training college. That said, as many of you noted last week, pregnancy could also have been behind it, her daughter being seven and all.
Paul Maisonneuve
So, in the words of Level 42, he’s only human after all. Paul really does seem to miss his wife, and we now know what understandably spooked him at the top of the funicular.
But that business with Richard LaPlace stank, quite frankly. Why would Paul be so keen to conduct the interview (having distanced himself from dirtying his hands to that point), and then hound him to suicide by issuing threats? “The old way” all felt a bit Guantánamo Lite for my liking.
It got me wondering whether Paul could have even arranged his own assassination attempt, knowing he wouldn’t be killed but that his would-be killer would be seen. And how could he not have been aware of a prison break involving Serano and Gorbier? That said, if I had grown up in the weird warren that was No 52, I would have gone a bit loopy as well.
It was notable, too, that Paul was drawn back to Laura’s cafe at the end. You don’t cast a Michael Haneke alumna and give them nothing to do, so we certainly haven’t seen the last of her.
Other key players
Michel Giraud: He’s probably dead, but all that was confirmed was that the corpse wasn’t Gorbier, not that it was his erstwhile cellmate. So he could be out there too …
Caroline LaPlace: Any apparently minor character given a little extra attention has to arouse a bit of suspicion (we didn’t even find out her mum’s christian name), although she certainly seemed innocent enough. Interesting that Sandra seemed to bond with her.
Henri Norbert: Still dodgy – he pulled strings to get his homes built and has political ambitions. He’s in this up to his neck.
Time of the wolf
A few lupine allusions this week. Paul, describing Kaz Gorbier as “a wolf amongst wolves”. Sandra’s childhood drawing of a little girl and a wolf. And, of course, Serano’s arm. Honest, guv’nors, I really did write “bet it’s a wolf” when the tattoo was first mentioned.
Gorbier and Serano, for all their delicious awfulness, are weirdly careless with it. I can’t help thinking Gorbier wanted to be seen in the truck at the end – surely someone would have spotted him and noted the numberplate, just as he was clocked by Brice the midnight toker? Also, why carry a big gun around in public if you aren’t going to use it?
And then there are the ghosts. Last week, as Bluedylan noted, there was reference to a ghost town. This time, it’s Serano advising her that “the ghosts are back” and a housing scam looks more likely than ever.
Thoughts and observations
- Sacré bleu, they know how to end an episode on Witnesses. It’s just a shame that this week’s Duel-esque vehicular carnage won’t have come as much of a surprise to anyone who caught the episode two trailer ...
- I confess to getting a bit lost in No 52, what with the cellars and holes in the wall. Damned atmospheric, though.
- What was the point of Sandra’s lingering shower scene?
- “His looks. His silences.” Paul’s French, Sandra – what do you expect?
- “Sandra is a character who’s frightened to death by the fact that things end and people die. To counter her fear she wants to control everything, which is obviously impossible,” Marie Dompnier (who plays her) has said. I think we’re starting to see evidence of that now.
- I like the erroneous picture on the IMDB page of Les Temoins. “Two convicts break out of prison – you won’t BELIEVE what happens next.”
- I bet the climax of the series takes place in those abandoned German tunnels.
- Le Tréport Tourist Board alternative slogan of the week: “Le Tréport – where you’re always being watched.”
