Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Cannes Confidential’ On Acorn TV, Where A French Cop And A British Con Man Solve Murders In The City On The Riviera

We’ve seen dozens of crime procedurals where two mismatched, bickering, attractive people are paired together to solve crimes, with their attraction to each other bubbling not that far below the surface. Those shows live and die on the chemistry between those two actors, and if it’s not on the screen, the show becomes damn near unwatchable. A new Acorn TV series that takes place in the French resort city of Cannes features bickering, mismatched crime solvers. But is it any good?

CANNES CONFIDENTIAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As we zoom into the shoreline of Cannes, France, two motorcycles chase each other.

The Gist: On one of the motorcycles is Lt. Camille Delmasse (Lucie Lucas) of the Cannes bureau of the National Police. When she finally tracks her perp down and cuffs him, he asks who she is. “I’m a cop. Welcome to Cannes,” she replies. Her partner Lea (Tamara Marthe) asks why she didn’t call for back up, and Camille says she didn’t have time.

Catching bad guys isn’t the only thing Camille has to contend with; she is determined to clear the name of her father Henry (Jean-Hugues Anglade), the former police chief in the city. He’s been in prison awaiting trial on corruption charges.

But there’s also the body of a local street artist, rumored to be the mysterious artist called The Joker, to deal with. As Camille investigates, she has a run-in with a motorcycle-riding British national named Harry King (Jamie Bamber), whom she finds consoling the dead artist’s sister not long after she dislodged the bumper on her vintage roadster, thanks to her temper and his riding skills.

He definitely knows more about the street artist, whose sister admits to Camille is the Joker, than he’s letting on, and they seem to cross paths at different parts of the investigation. They get intertwined when Camille and Lea question a suspect and she commandeers his motorcycle to chase someone who assaulted that suspect.

Meanwhile, Camille gets word that her father has decided to plead guilty to the corruption charges, which bewilders her. Again, Harry may have some information on that, as well, but he’s also in Cannes on a mission of his own.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Cannes Confidential is more or less the kind of procedural that would air on ABC. Why ABC and not CBS? Because to us it has more of a slick Castle–like feel than a staid NCIS feel.

Our Take: Cannes Confidential, created by Chris Murray, has to overcome a lot of hurdles in its first episode. First, Camille and Harry have to come into each other’s orbits so they can start working together, and a situation has to arise where the cop and the con artist make this ongoing arrangement that will make them into unlikely, bickering crime-solving partners. On top of this, we have Camille trying to clear her father’s name.

Of course, there’s also a mystery to solve, and that gets shortchanged in the first episode. There aren’t a lot of suspects, the mystery itself is easy to figure out, and it’s pretty much solved with ten minutes left in the episode. There are at least two long chases, and the scenery there is great, but one of them could have been cut to give more depth to the mystery.

Another hurdle the first episode doesn’t quite get over, though, is the fact that everyone except for Bamber is French, but speaking English. Except for television purposes, why in the world would everyone in a French town speak to each other in English? It makes absolutely no sense. And since all of the actors except for Bamber are French, the accents sometimes get in the way of the performances.

Not only is dialogue hard to hear over the pulsating soundtrack, but in trying to discern what the dialogue is, we can’t even really focus on the performance of Lucas and some of her costars. We usually don’t harp on this kind of stuff, but we would have just preferred everyone speak in French, including Bamber, given the setting of the series.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Harry and Camille make the deal that will keep them working together. See below, under “Pilot-y Line”, for more on this.

Sleeper Star: Got to be honest, we didn’t really see any standouts in this category.

Most Pilot-y Line: When she makes her deal with Harry, Camille says, “And I will nail your balls to the deck of your crappy boat if you do a runner on me.” Not sure if the line or the delivery was clunky, but that line landed with a huge thud.

Our Call: SKIP IT. A show like Cannes Confidential needs to have good chemistry between its main characters in order for viewers to buy into the bickering that’s barely covering sexual tension. And we saw none of that in the first episode, and we doubt that the chemistry will develop over the first season of the show.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.