Imagine you were able to go back 12 months in time and address all the wrongs that blighted your life that year. Great, huh? But what other ripples would that cause? Is it possible that by tinkering with time you could actually make things worse? That’s the premiss of this new Belgian and French four-part thriller from Walter Presents.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
It’s New Year’s Eve, 31st December 2023 and under-pressure surgeon, Marc Honoré, is killed in his office at the hospital. The story involves three people very close to Marc who shortly after the murder get in a lift together. But the lift – and this is where things get a bit bizarre – not only takes them to a different floor, it also takes them back 12 months in time. When they leave the elevator, it’s 31st December 2022 – and Marc is very much still alive and well.
It's the stories of the three time-travellers that we focus on here. Firstly, Marc’s ex-wife, Anna (Claire Keim). She had left Marc earlier in the year and is now with a young surgeon who worked for Marc and lodged with them both. Secondly, Marc’s best friend, Cédric (Marc Riso), who has just proposed to his girlfriend. She is in a wheelchair, but when he goes back 12 months, it’s prior to the accident that paralysed her and prior to when they met. And the third person in the lift is the police detective, Juliette Kharoub (Émilie Dequenne) who happened to be in the hospital collecting her late husband’s belongings when Marc’s death occurred. But in a further complicated plot-twist, we learn that she blamed Marc for her own husband’s premature death from heart failure.
We have the somewhat weird situation where these three join forces to find Marc’s killer, who they suspect to be the same person responsible for other deaths at the hospital, which were blamed on Marc (including Juliette’s husband). They all seem remarkably calm, despite having time-travelled back 12 months. Juliette, for example, confidently tells her boss that her clear-up rate for crimes will improve – presumably because she now knows who committed them!
Yes, it’s all a bit whacky and nonsensical, but it’s actually pretty good. The camera work is high quality, and the acting is sensitive and engaging – when Cédric goes to the ballet to watch his fiancé dancing and later clumsily introduces himself to her, knowing that she has no clue who he is, it’s really quite moving.
‘Start Over' is quite a unique series (known as ‘Année Zéro' in French); I’m struggling to think of anything quite like it. If you can put to one-side the ridiculousness of the time-travelling plot, the rest of the aspects of the show stand up pretty well.
Walter Presents: ‘Start Over' is available as a boxset on C4 Streaming now.
