Thursday TV Choice: The Madame Blanc Mysteries (Channel 5, 9pm)
Although its creator and writer Sally Lindsay is the undoubted star of The Madame Blanc Mysteries, over the past few years, viewers have also become fond of some of her supporting cast in Sainte Victoire.
They include Steve Edge, who plays Jean’s sidekick and love interest Dom Hayes, Sally’s co-writer Sue Vincent who appears as mechanic Gloria Beaushaw, and Robin Askwith and Sue Holderness, who occasionally steal the show as eccentric couple Jeremy and Judith Lloyd James.
Alex Gaumond’s role as Chief of Police André Caron has also expanded, as has Tony Robinson’s part as Dom’s Uncle Patrick, a petty thief turned pub landlord.
After previously being a guest star on the show, Robinson is now a series regular on the series, something that has brought the 78-year-old Blackadder and Time Team star some relief.
“Whenever I go into a series, I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t a bit of me that hoped they might be attracted to that character,” he says.
“It’s like when footballers say ‘Oh, we just take it one match at a time, we don’t think about where we are in the league’, and you know that’s a load of rubbish.
“I hoped that the character would be picked up. As an actor, the length of your employment is normally so short that there’s always part of you thinking ‘How am I going to pay the phone bill?’”
In tonight’s series four finale, Jeremy and Dom enjoy a haircut and some pampering at a swanky old barbershop.
Meanwhile, Jovan (Danny Hatchard), a visitor from a nearby village, finishes his haircut with barber Vinnie (Atilla Akinci).
He’s brought his young son, Freddie (Anthony Irons) along, and is hoping to sell an old jewelled bird trinket in Sainte Victoire.
Later, as Jovan and Freddie head to dinner, Jovan inspects the trinket, before he is attacked in an alley by a masked figure, leaving Freddie screaming for help as he watches his father get dragged away.
As Caron and Jean investigate Jovan’s past and the eagle trinket, they begin to suspect he may have had something to do with a recent jewellery heist. But who attacked him in a bid to steal the piece back?
Meanwhile, at the pub, Gloria is finishing her schnapps when a drunk man hassles one of the barmaids.
The man is local community pest Otto Moncrief (Mat LeRoche), who Patrick duly bars from the pub. It’s a move that once again shows how his originally untrustworthy character has evolved.
“When I started, he was the dodgy one, who’d been in the nick a lot and hadn’t shaken bad habits,” Robinson says.
“Now, it’s much more about him recognising dodgy behaviour in other people, and wreaking retribution on them.”
However, it’s rare that you cross someone in this seemingly idyllic part of southern France without consequences – so will Patrick live to regret his noble actions?