Can Jean solve her final murder in The Madame Blanc Mysteries?

But in recent years, that’s begun to change.

The genre has steadily grown in stature, with awards given out for the best of them at crime writing festivals across the country. While Agatha Christie remains the doyenne of them all, new faces have burst onto the scene, not least Richard Osman, whose Thursday Murder Club books are the very epitome of cosy.

Other names to conjure with from the past and present include Josephine Tey, Anthony Horowitz, MC Beaton and SJ Bennett (the latter has adopted the late Queen Elizabeth II as her sleuth, no less). What all of them have in common is their use of humour and gentle escapism.

Maybe we should be adding Sally Lindsay and Sue Vincent to that list of writers. Not only do they star in The Madame Blanc Mysteries, they created the series and have written every episode to date.

And who can blame them for coming up with the premise? After all, if you’re going to write a series to star in yourself, then why not set it in a sun-kissed area like Sainte Victoire so that you’ll always be working in good weather? Viewers hoping to make a pilgrimage to the location may, however, be disappointed to find it’s not in the south of France but on Gozo. But never mind.

“What inspired me was a lady I met on holiday,” claims Lindsay when asked about the initial idea for the series. “She was a really eminent antiques dealer and really very knowledgeable and fantastic, and she was telling me about how she had a third-generation antiques dealership in London.

“I don’t think it happens anymore but what used to happen in Europe is basically her and her husband would get their van and they’d drive to these beautiful little towns in the South of France and then the Italians would come and the Spanish would come and they’d all swap items. What was complete tat in our country would be really fashionable in Italy.”

As a result, Jean White was born. When we first met her back in 2021, she was grieving the sudden death of her husband Rory, with whom she’d run a successful antiques business. Following his death, she discovered they were in debt, and after paying the creditors baying for money, Jean was left with one asset – an idyllic home on the coast of southern France, where she decided to relocate permanently.

“Making this show was like winning a competition,” adds Vincent. “Sally was on holiday and Channel 5 wanted a script quickly, so she rang me and I knocked out the first 20 pages in about two-and-a-half hours. There were some ups and downs along the way, but we never lost the vision of our world.”

And thank goodness for that. Here’s hoping we’ll be going back for a return visit – and more cosiness – in the near future.