The beautiful city of Montreal in Canada is the setting for this latest Walter Presents offering featuring the talents of Eve Garance (Rachel Graton) as a police sketch artist who has an uncanny ability to extract facial details from victims that they’ve previous suppressed.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
We’re first introduced to Eve and her idiosyncratic colleagues (more of them later) as they’re tasked with investigating the disappearance of a ten-year old girl. Parallels are drawn with a previous unsolved case and Eve works alongside a previous victim to get a clearer picture of the perpetrator. However, the victim – now an adult – is pregnant, so Eve must tread carefully and not further traumatise the woman, potentially damaging her and her unborn child. She now lives with her ex-husband’s father – a relationship that raises a few eyebrows, too.
Meanwhile, two of Eve’s colleagues – Bernard and Anthony – follow-up a lead which takes them on a journey to a much-changed part of town. When they spot a new lock on a door leading to an underground basement area, they break-in and make a significant discovery.
This is very much a character-driven show. We have the fragile Eve, who suffered her own trauma some years ago when her own son disappeared and suffers with PTSD-like symptoms as a result. Bernard (Rémy Girard) is the near retirement, grizzled old-school cop. Looking like a throwback to any cop show of the 70s and 80s, he’s a tough-talking, no-compromise sort of guy – but very much a dinosaur in the modern age. Anthony (Adrien Belugou) is the new boy. It’s his first day on the job, and as cop-show formula dictates, he’s given a hard time by his new colleagues; particularly the unwelcoming Bernard who, when accused by Anthony of disliking him because of the colour of his skin, claims to hate “Arabs, Anglos, gays, blacks, disrespectful kids, Chinese drivers, pimply kids who are always glued to their phones, and the female gender in general”. But, of course, as the formula also dictates, it’s Anthony who spots the breakthrough that leads them to the discovery in the basement, winning Bernard’s begrudging respect. And last but not least, we have the team’s leader, Maryse Ferron (Sophie Lorain). She has a brittle-bones disorder and is confined to a wheelchair as a result. But that does nothing to placate her determination to solve the city’s crimes, regardless of how old they might be.
Each member of the team has had to fight adversity in one form or another, and it’s their backstories – which will no doubt be expanded upon as the series develops – that are the main attraction. The actual plot is a tried and tested one, to be honest. But if you enjoy character-driven crime shows – and the French-Canadian angle does give it a degree of originality – then give this a go.
Walter Presents: ‘The Sketch Artist’ is available as a full boxset on C4 Streaming from Friday 27th October 2023.
