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The Madame Blanc Mysteries: Series 4 (TV)
R0 - United Kingdom - Acorn Media Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (20th September 2025). |
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The Film
 With her arch nemesis Barbara – who had a secret relationship with her forgery-trafficking husband and murdered him – finally put behind bars and his scheming ex-wife finally showing her true colors before getting out of the picture, London expatriate antiques dealer Jean White (Scott & Bailey's Sally Lindsay) and part-time general handyman/part-time rideshare driver Dominic Hayes (Starlings' Steve Edge) are still keeping their relationship a secret from the residents of French antiques haven Sainte-Victoire: among them head of police Andre Caron (Hampstead's Alex Gaumond) who calls Jean in to consult on cases involving the use as weapons or the theft of items of unknown provenance, brash village mechanic Gloria (Sue Vincent), Jean's local antiques shop business partner Charlie (Sanchia McCormack) and her life parnter Simone (Djinda Kane) who was once a forger and almost blackmailed into helping Barbara get rid of Jean, Dominic's uncle Patrick (Blackadder's "Baldrick" Tony Robinson) who took over the local wine bar, and rich village eccentrics Jeremy and Judith Lloyd James (Tower of Evil's Robin Askwith and Only Fools and Horses' Sue Holderness). The show's fourth season once again opens with "The Christmas Special" (45:10) in which Caron calls Jean in to investigate the murder of an alcoholic puppeteer seemingly by his own puppet which turns out to be a very good but flawed (and booby-trapped) copy of his actual antique heirloom, causing her to look beyond the weapon to his dysfunctional relationships with his equally alcoholic son whose daughter was taken away by the victim's wife whose new husband has connections of questionable legality. Meanwhile, Jeremy and Judith are each keeping the same secret from each other about the legitimacy of their decades-long marriage. In "Beach Club" (44:52), Jeremy and Judith are on their second honeymoon and discover the body of a tech CEO suffocated and ready for crossing the River Styx with some particularly rare and expensive coins that themselves help Jean and Caron navigate their way through a web of dodgy business dealings, personal affairs, and past tragedies towards the real motive and culprit in one of the more diverting cases of the series. Meanwhile, Patrick suspects forgery of another kind from the weekly deliveries of wine from two of the village's oldest and most respective wine-making widows. In "Inheritance" (44:58), the seemingly accidental death of Charlie's cleaning lady/surrogate mother turns out to be anything but, leading to the discovery of several valuable antiques among the old lady's meager belongings and a decades old feud between her, her sister, and her husband's business partner with Charlie in the middle when she turns out to be the dead woman's sole beneficiary. Meanwhile, Gloria sprains her ankle and leaves her mischievous dog in the care of Jeremy and Judith. In "Bad Education" (45:16), the local library is hosting a touring exhibit of a statue of Egyptian goddess Hathor. When the night watchman is attacked and the statue damaged, the locals fear for their reputation while Jean and Caron look into a group of university students who visited the library and got into an altercation with the guard. Gangster John Marsden (Stephen Bailey), who Jean once accused of murder, makes her an offer she cannot refuse when his unsuspecting mother pays a visit.  In "The Blueprint" (44:46), Dom accompanies Jean to Malta when she is commissioned to authenticate the alleged original blueprints of the rebuilt city after the 1565 siege by Jean de Valette which disappeared when he died in 1568 after laying down the foundation which would give an idea of how the city was intended to look in his vision. Upon arrival, however, they witness masked robbers attacking their host and her husband with a wrench and stealing the plans. Suspects include the restaurateur couple whose grandfather allegedly rediscovered the plans and a college friend of the victim's who is a Jean de Valette obsessive who opposed her idea to give the plans back to the people of Malta but the investigating detective is dubious about what Jean and Dom claim to have seen. Back in Sainte-Victoire, Caron has his hands full when Jeremy, Judith, Patrick, and Gloria take the law into their own hands when Gloria's father Trevor (ChuckleVision's Paul Chuckle) is the victim of a "crash for cash" insurance scam while driving Dom's precious car uninsured. In "Antique Antics" (44:48), the icy art expert of a touring antiques reality show being hosted by Jeremy and Judith is poisoned. Jean and Caron are at odds when her old friend and the show's co-host David (Coronation Street's Les Dennis) - who was nearly murdered by his handsome younger psycho husband in series two – becomes the prime suspect when it turns out both were up for a spin-off show. Dom is insecure about Jean's friendship with the show's director and her old college friend (Hollyoaks' Richard Blackwood). In "Where Eagle Dare" (45:14), thing are still tense between Jean and Dom when Dom is able to provide evidence in Caron's investigation of a small-time crook stabbed and robbed before he could visit Jean to appraise a piece of jewelry that might have been part of a major heist in Pamplona. Gendarme Richard (The Legend's Jacqueline Berces) spearheads the investigation while Caron looks after the victim's young pickpocket son. Without the overarching villain subplot and Dom's ex out of the way, the relationship between Jean and Dom becomes the source of tension from one case to another as they disagree about who to tell and when, both wanting more time between them before everyone puts in their opinion (which seems realistic since everyone in the show is in each other's pockets). Thankfully, however, the relationship does not take up as much screentime per episode so there is more of a focus on the cases and they are actually more diverting this season. Even when the culprit seems obvious, the why ends up being interesting enough. The comic relief between the supporting characters is more entertaining and less like filler, and the antics involving them taking on less serious cases of wrongdoing are deserving of a show themselves, particularly the "crash for cash" sting operation. Putting Dom and Jean at odds for the last episode seems like a dramatic contrivance since one would think from firsthand experience with each other's personal lives that they would both be more understanding, but we have seen this type of complication in other Acorn cozy mysteries involving will-they-won't-they romantic entanglements between the leads and they usually amount to nothing. Hopefully the relationship will remain a subplot in the next series. 
Video
The seven episodes are spread over one dual-layer disc and one single-layer, and the 16:9 anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen is typical of their presentations of these shows, the video of which is presumably optimized for digital broadcast giving a handsome-enough rendition of the exotic scenery with a warm bias to the grading but one wonders if a Blu-ray presentation would offer a substantially more detailed presentation or not. 
Audio
The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio is dialogue-focused and mostly in English with some incidental French dialogue translated with burnt-in English subtitles. The optional English SDH track has some proofing and transcription errors throughout suggesting that there were auto-transcribed by Acorn rather than the production providing a dialogue transcript. 
Extras
The only extra is a picture gallery (1:41) on the second disc.
Overall
The fourth series of The Madame Blanc Mysteries is an improvement on the previous series with more diverting cases and subplots are more entertaining and less like filler.
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