Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Madame Blanc Mysteries’ Season 3 On Acorn TV, With More Antique-Driven Murder Mysteries In A Sunny French Village

Shows like The Madame Blanc Mysteries continue to be popular on Acorn TV because they’re visual comfort food, with mysteries that are easy to follow and try to solve, and characters that you want to spend time with. In the case of this series, there’s also the sunny environs of a fishing village in the south of France that makes things even warmer and more inviting.

THE MADAME BLANC MYSTERIES SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In the harbor of Sainte Victoire, Jeremy Lloyd James (Robin Askwith) and his wife Judith (Sue Holderness) watch as a diving team loads equipment onto Jeremy’s boat; he’s renting the boat out to a scientific crew looking to survey the ocean floor for possible mining activity.

The Gist: The boat driver, Peter (Simon Bubb), laments that his wife wants him to be out on the water less, and it seems like Gary (Adam Bond), one of the two divers are less than sympathetic. In the water, Gary and his fellow diver Jane (Roma Malik) find a coin on the ocean floor, but soon after that, Gary suffers a cardiac event and dies. Alec (Christian Scicluna), a fisherman who cleans boats on the harbor as a sideline, performs CPR on Gary to no avail.

The next thing we see, Jean White (Sally Lindsay) is being driven by town taxi driver — and Jean’s sometimes-more-than-friends bestie — Dom Hayes (Steve Edge) to the harbor; Caron (Alex Gaumond), the police chief, has called Jean in because that coin was found on Gary after he died. Jean, an antiques expert, identifies it right away, and wants to report it to international authorities, but Caron wants to keep things on the down low for now.

Caron soon determines that Gary was murdered, as the mouthpiece from his breathing apparatus was never found. This is when Jean’s other skill, her ability to solve murders, kicks into gear. She asks Dom to pose as a rare coin dealer and get in touch with Jane to find out if there are more coins down there. When Jane is willing to make another dive to look, they take the recorded conversation to Caron, who brings Jane in for questioning. But, as usual, Caron is not happy with the methods Jean used to get that information.

In the meantime, Gloria (Sue Vincent) is dealing with her father Trevor (Paul Chuckle) coming back to town early from his latest jaunt to collect memorabilia; one problem with that is that her boyfriend Cooper (Avant Strangel) has been sleeping over. After a night where Trevor is so rude that Cooper leaves early, Gloria decides that she’s through being a parent to her dad and throws him out. He goes to stay with Jeremy and Judith, which first ticks Judith off, but then starts to cramp Jeremy’s style when Trevor pulls out a bottle of Judith’s “favorite tipple,” some premium Irish cream.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As always, The Madame Blanc Mysteries has the same light mystery feel of other Acorn shows, like the various Miss Fisher series, to My Life Is Murder, to Agatha Raisin. Fans of Murder, She Wrote would also love this show.

Our Take: One of the joys of a show like The Madame Blanc Mysteries is that it builds a nice community of characters around the person who solves the mysteries in every episode. By this point in the show’s run, the world around Jean White is well-established, as are the backstories with them. We know she has a bit of a romantic history with Dom, for instance, and that they always seem to be dancing around being more than just friends. In this episode, we also find out that Dom’s daughter has met someone and decided to not come back to Sainte Victoire.

It’s those backstories, and the warm relationship between the people in Jean’s life, that makes the series such a cozy watch. In a scene where Jean, Dom and Gloria find out some of the local oceanic lore from Alec, there’s an easygoing nature to a lot of the interaction that comes with a cast that’s well-established and has that kind of conversational chemistry.

A lot of that is fostered by Lindsay and Vincent, who created the series and co-write the episodes. By this time, the viewers have such warm feelings for the characters that the story of Trevor getting on Gloria’s last nerve is a welcome diversion from the episode’s mystery, which sometimes feels a little too easy to solve if you’re paying attention.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Jean finds a way to keep Trevor out of Gloria’s hair for a few days, and it involves some Black Sabbath memorabilia at an out-of-town fan convention.

Sleeper Star: At this point, we just love looking at shots of the village that stands in for Saint Victoire, and we want to vacation there at some point soon.

Most Pilot-y Line: Trevor asks Cooper how much he makes as a taxi driver. Of course, Gloria tells him how rude that is, but even the most filter-free people know not to ask people what they earn… right?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Madame Blanc Mysteries continues to be an easygoing light mystery series with a fun community of people around Sally Lindsay’s title character.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.