Detective shows are police procedurals are a dime a dozen, and many of them are extremely good. You may think that you’ve seen all there is to see when it comes to cops, robbers, and the sometimes blurry line between the two.
But that’s when you have to broaden your horizons a little bit. There are crime dramas from around the world that rival anything Hollywood has ever put out, and one of the best is available to watch for the low price of zero dollars on the free streaming service Plex.
Spiral is the best crime drama you’ve never heard of
The dark side of the City of Light
Spiral is a French series that ran for an impressive eight seasons on Canal+, from 2005 to 2021. Some of the main cast stuck around for the whole of that time, including Caroline Proust as Laure Berthaud, a Paris police officer and the head of a special investigation team; Thierry Godard as Gilles “Gilou” Escoffier, a loose canon who works under Berthaud; and Audrey Fleurot as Joséphine Karlsson, a cynical young lawyer always trying to get involved with high-profile cases.
Not every cast member sticks with the show for the entirety of its 16-year run, but many come close. Other important characters include Frédéric “Tintin” Fromentin, the moderating force on Berthaud’s rule-breaking squad; clean-cut lawyer Pierre Clément (Grégory Fitoussi); and magistrate judge François Roban (Philippe Duclos), who works tirelessly in the name of justice even as he’s chastised for being cold or cruel with suspects and witnesses. If a show is going to last a long time, it needs a great ensemble, and Spiral has one.
Every season of the show sees the characters dealing with different cases that give us new looks at the French criminal justice system. The first season starts with the body of a young Romanian woman turning up in a landfill, which leads to the discovery of a complex web of corruption. In the fourth season, attacks from a far-left extremist group pit the police officers trying to bring these criminals to justice against the lawyers trying to give them fair representation. In the eighth and final season, Gilou goes undercover with a violent gang and risks getting lost in the role.
Spiral doesn’t explore anything you haven’t seen on other crime dramas, but it’s exceedingly rare for a show to explore these kinds of topics so well and for so long.
Spiral is grim, gritty, and glorious
It can be hard to tell right from wrong in this version of Paris
The French title for Spiral is Engrenages, which translates roughly to “gears.” The idea is that the characters on the show are sometimes unable to overcome the sense that they are gears in the system, no matter how hard they work or how much they care. Bureaucracy keeps them from doing everything they feel they need to do to stop crime, but some of their tactics are so reckless and ruthless they’re barely better than criminals themselves. Spiral explores the fine lines between justice and revenge, between civilization and chaos, and between law enforcement officers and the criminals they chase. The show is often compared favorably to The Wire, an American crime drama that digs into these same questions. But at 86 episodes, there’s a lot more of Spiral to enjoy.
That the show is able to stay as compelling as it does for as long as it does is remarkable. In fact, Spiral gets better as it goes, as the writers, actors, and directors find the voices for the characters, who grow and evolve over the course of the series. We get glimpses into their personal lives, but most of them live for their work, which is often terrible for them and good for us as viewers.
Like The Wire, Spiral is dedicated to depicting police work as realistically as possible, with all the tough choices and moral ambiguity that entails. For viewers outside of France, it’s also interesting to get a look into how this country’s criminal justice system operates, since not everything is the same. For instance, as a magistrate judge, François Roban often gets directly involved in cases and talks with witnesses, which might be surprising to audiences in the U.S., where judges are meant to play a more impartial role. So Spiral can give you a civics lesson as well as entertain you.
Watch Spiral at your leisure and for free
Thank you, Plex
Originally, Spiral aired on the French network Canal+, and aired in the U.K. on BBC Four. Elsewhere, you can watch it on the streaming service MHz Choice…but that requires a paid subscription, which seems pointless when all eight seasons are also available to watch on Plex, which is a free streaming service that doesn’t so much require you to set up an account. All you have to to do is go to the Plex website, search for “Spiral,” and get watching.
In an age when streaming services are raising their prices all the time, free streaming services can be a godsend. The movies and TV shows you’ll find there aren’t always of the highest quality, but if you know where to look, you can definitely unearth some hidden gems. Spiral is one of the brightest.
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Spiral recommends itself
It’d be easy to keep praising Spiral to high heaven. Onscreen, Paris is often depicted as a romantic fantasyland where characters are destined to meet cute at bohemian coffee shops. And it’s fun to visit that fantasyland, but Spiral provides some bracing, much-needed perspective. In Spiral, distant glimpses of iconic monuments like the Eiffel Tower only emphasize how far away we are from that idyllic vision; this Paris is fighting with poverty and inequality. Some of the criminals who live and work here are cruel people, and others are sympathetic figures who come to Paris looking to build a better life only to get drawn into the criminal underworld for want of other opportunities. Spiral never forgets to treat its characters (and its audience) with the respect and depth they deserve.
