This six-episode series fictionalises the story of the notorious French serial rapist who attacked more than 50 women and minors across three decades, in mostly the same location, in largely the same style. It is a sombre and often difficult watch. The knowledge that it took 30 years for the real culprit to be apprehended casts a long shadow over the storytelling here and leaves this dignified programme with a heavy weight to bear. Nevertheless, it proves itself to be as capable and persuasive as it is harrowing.
Each episode focuses on a different character with a fictional name. It opens with “Christine (The Victim)”, who is powerfully played by The Returned’s Alix Poisson. It is 1988 and Christine returns to consciousness on the banks of the Sambre, having been violently assaulted as she waited for an early bus to work. When she is taken to the police station by her sister, the horrors of the attack are compounded by the shocking, if not surprising, errors of the male officers to whom she reports the crime. Christine, still in the early stages of shock, recalls what has happened to her in precise detail. The camera lingers on her for what feels like a very long time, as she carefully answers the crude, insensitive questions of the bullish Capitaine Breton (Pasquale D’Inca). Placing the viewer mostly in Breton’s chair makes the contrast between his cold, unbothered reaction and what one would hope a modern audience’s understanding of the situation would be painful and stark.
The local police station is established as being inept and parochial from the outset. Borrowing a familiar detective drama trope, we enter through the eyes of a new starter at the station, Jean-Pierre Blanchot (Julien Frison), who has returned home to the north from the bright lights of the outskirts of Paris. The youthful Blanchot finds old-school officers who are stuck in their ways, fuelled by anti-immigrant biases and a desire to do as little as possible. They use one single notebook to log every case, in order to keep paperwork to a minimum. After Christine reports the attack to Breton, he downgrades it to “attempted robbery with assault” and asks her if she still wants to file a complaint. The blood on her face has barely dried.
The humiliation she has experienced in reporting the crime is followed by an unsparing portrait of the trauma she endures, as the impact of the attack slowly appears and plays out. She cannot work, she has what we would now consider to be post-traumatic stress disorder, her marriage falls apart and every interaction with the police only emphasises their lack of compassion and comprehension of the crime. It is utterly horrifying and deliberately frustrating.
Meanwhile, we meet “Enzo (The Rapist)” early on in the drama, portrayed by Jonathan Turnbull as a popular and garrulous factory worker who also coaches the local football team. Christine did not see his face, but through her other senses – his smell, how he sounded – she knows it is him when she passes him in the supermarket. But, as we know from the real case, Enzo is able to move through their small community undetected for many years. Other women report more attacks; the police treat their allegations as entirely insignificant. While a young woman details the awful circumstances of how she was assaulted, a police officer in the background makes crass jokes about her. Again, at the end of her interview, she is asked if she wants to make a complaint. “Are you serious?” she replies. It seems that, in 1988, the police are catastrophically unserious. Despite the obvious similarities, they do not connect the cases or preserve evidence. The urge to scream at the screen comes again and again.
Sambre is billed as “fiction, inspired by real events” and a note at the end reiterates that it is intended to pay tribute to the victims. It has been made by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who directed the documentary series The Staircase (2004-18), which was at the frontier of the new true-crime wave and remains one of the better examples of the genre. In dramatising this story over six episodes, we can see how the scrappy investigations repeatedly failed the victims and how the rapist was able to fly under the radar, despite operating in relatively plain sight. It is not until 1996, where episode two picks up, that the attacks are even considered to be the work of the same man.
This is not an easy series to watch. It is distressing and uncomfortable. But it also stands as an important artefact of outrage, spotlighting the institutional failings and ingrained cultural misogyny that left the rapist at large for so long – and it is all the more affecting for taking its time.
• Sambre: Anatomy of a Crime aired on BBC Four and is available on BBC iPlayer
