The Break (La Trêve)
Season 1 – 10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each – French with English subtitles
4 out of 5 paws
Yoann Peeters, a police detective mourning a painful loss moves back to his hometown from Brussels with his daughter Camille. On his first day back he is called to investigate a possible suicide of Driss, a young African football player, whose body is pulled from the river. The investigation soon uncovers dark secrets and goings on in a small town in the Ardennes Forest. Did Driss commit suicide or was he murdered? Is the mayor behind the intimidating attacks on local farmers to sell their land? Each episode ends on a cliff hanger, most episodes start with surrealistic dreams. Twists and turns in the investigation have you second guessing who the possible murderer actually is.
The Break (La Trêve)
Season 2 – 10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each – French with English subtitles
5 out of 5 paws
When Jasmina, Yoann’s former therapist, learns that her newly released patient Dany Bastin is accused of a new murder shortly after a therapy session. She talks about a miscarriage of justice and asks for help from a man she trusts. But Yoann Peeters is no longer an investigator ...
Under pressure from the local police Dany Bastin confesses to the crime of Baroness Du Tilleul; but did he do it? Or is he being set up by the actual murderer? Yoann and Jasmina begin by investigating the case of Clemence Lorent: the first alleged murder of Dany Bastin. Because, at the time, that investigation also seems to have been botched. The plot quickly unravels, and Yoann too, into a dark psychological thriller that leaves you wanting more.
Public Enemy
Season 1 (2016) – 10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each
Season 2 (2019) – 10 Episodes of approx.. 50 minutes each
5 out of 5 paws
‘Public Enemy’ is a slow burn police psychological thriller from Belgium. Loosely based on real events it tells the story of Guy Beranger, a child killer released from prison after 20 years into the care of a monastery; and Chloe Muller, a senior detective assigned to protecting him, who has demons of her own from her past. The local villagers of Vielsart, where the abbey is located, want nothing to do with Beranger and want him removed from the area. The monks of the abbey don’t want a child killer in their midst. Beranger wants to become a monk; Lucas Stassart, the master of initiates, wants to help him. Shortly after his arrival children in the area start disappearing only to turn up dead a couple of days later. Is Beranger responsible for their deaths? Chloe and Michael, the local police chief, investigate the murders; Lucas, whose brothers Patrick and Vincent want the child killer gone, is trying to keep Beranger in the abbey. Chloe, whose sister Jessica disappeared 20 years ago, questions Guy who might have known her sisters kidnapper. Season 1 has all sorts of twists and surprises but is very well scripted and acted. Season 2 starts 2 years later and follows Chloe and Michael trying to find kidnapped girls that have disappeared over the last 22 years. The series ends with a cliff-hanger that bodes well for a Season 3. Most of ‘Public Enemy’ takes place in the Ardennes and is beautifully filmed. The acting is quite good, and with the exception of a couple of minor details, well plotted and scripted. It is reminiscent of other Belgian series that have come out over the past 5 years – such as ‘The Break’, ‘Undercover’, ‘Tabula Rasa’, and ‘Hotel Beausejour’; and while slow paced, I found to be extremely enjoyable.
Hotel Beau Sejour
Season 1 – 10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each – Flemish (Dutch) with English subtitles
Season 2 – TBA
4 out of 5 paws
First Season:
In Lanklaar, a small village near Belgium's Dutch border, a Belgian teenager, Kato, covered in blood, wakes up at the small Hotel Beau Séjour. She staggers into the bathroom to find a bloody corpse in the tub – her own. She hasn’t any memory of the day before or how she ended up in the hotel room. She climbs out of the hotel window and tries to make it back to her home and on the way discovers that most people can’t either see or hear her – is she dead? Has Kato been murdered? She soon realizes that she is, in fact, a ghost. Soon, Kato discovers that five people are able to see her – including her father and stepsister ) and communicate with her, and she enlists their aid as she desperately tries to find out who was responsible for her murder and why. Once again deep, dark secrets emerge – drugs, theft, infidelity, and murder – as Kato searches for her murderer, and the truth.
Second season:
Maurice, a Belgian Naval officer, awakes to discover his own dead body hanging from a mast on his sailboat off the coast of Bruges. Refusing to believe he hanged himself, he must solve his own murder.
Tabula Rasa
Season 1 – 9 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each – Flemish (Dutch) with English Subtitles
4.5 out of 5 paws
Tabula Rasa is one of Netflix‘s latest Belgian TV series – and in my opinion, the best to date. If you liked 'Hotel Beau Se Jour', you will love this series. Mie, a young woman suffering from memory loss since a car accident a year ago, has just been institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital. A local man, Thomas De Geest, has gone missing, and the police investigating the case have reason to believe that Mie was the last person to see him alive. However, Mie can’t remember day to day events and has to keep notes and drawings in a journal that she has to refer to every day. The series keeps flipping from the present (over a period of 10 days in December) back to events that happened 6 months before, 4 weeks before, 3 weeks before, and right up to the day of De Geest’s disappearance. The first episode flashes back to when Mie, her husband, and young daughter Romy, first moved into her grandparents’ house – a spooky, mysterious house in the woods that soon appears to be haunted. Is Mie imagining all the strange events that occur, or are they actually happening? Why are the police so intent on finding Thomas De Geest? Is Mie’s husband Benoit having an affair? Why does Romy appear to be increasingly troubled and hard to handle? Tabula Rasa is an excellent psychological thriller that with all its twists and turns, will keep you guessing until the second half of the last episode. The acting is excellent, particularly from the three lead actors: Veerle Baetens as Mie, Stijn Van Opstal as her husband Benoit, and Jeroen Perceval as Thomas De Geest (I’ll give a special shout out to Peter Van Den Begin as Vronsky – Mie’s pyromaniac friend in the psychiatric hospital). I loved the show – I did find the last episode to drag on a little, and there were a few plot holes – but the ending was completely unexpected and surprising.
Note: Lynn Van Royen - who played Kato in Hotel Beau Sejour, plays a small supporting role in Tabula Rasa as Mie's sister
Undercover
Season 1 – 10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each – Mainly Flemish (Dutch) and a little French with English subtitles
4 out of 5 paws
Season 2 - TBA
Undercover
Undercover takes place in the Belgian province of Limburg described in the opening narrative as the so-called ‘Colombia of ecstasy,’ where more than 500 million pills with a street value of $2.25 billion are exported every year. As a result, the region also suffers from exploding drug labs, executions in broad daylight and chemical waste dumps. This is where Undercover comes in, telling its fictional story about real problems. inspired by real events. Undercover is set in a campsite on the border of the Netherlands and Belgium. Ferry Bouman, a drug lord lives in a campground villa on the Dutch-Belgian border at the weekend with his wife Danielle and her dog Khalesi (really, a Chihuahua named Khalesi). Undercover agents Bob and Kim (unknown to each other at the beginning) infiltrate a kingpin's drug operation by posing as a couple at the campground where he spends his weekends. Being undercover takes time to try and get closer to Ferry, the monotony starts getting to Bob. There’s tension between living with an unknown (Kim – who apparently doesn’t mind doing Ecstasy herself on her days off) and putting up with Ferry’s son-in-law Jurgen (a violent, brainless, thug). Apparently Ferry has his own undercover snitch in the police department – will he uncover Bob and Kim? I’ve watched the first two episodes so far – I like it, it has a lot of promise. The contrast between the beautiful countryside and the ugly undertone of the drug world, the tension between Bob and Jurgen, Bob and Kim, pretty much Bob and everybody else … a fair bit of violence, a little black comedy, a dog named Khalesi … what’s not to like?
Season 2 (2020)
10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each
Flemish (Dutch) with English subtitles
4 out of 5 paws
Season 2 starts about a year after the explosive ending of the first season. Ferry Bouman is still in jail and awaiting trial. Bob, still with the under-cover unit, is divorced and living alone. Kim has left the police force and is now an investigator for Human Rights. Kim gets Bob to help her with her research into an illegal arms trade in Syria which leads her to a country and western ranch in northern Belgium. Kim gets gunned down in the first episode and Bob goes undercover trying to infiltrate the arms smuggling operation at the El Dorado Ranch. The ranch is owned by the Berger brothers – Laurent, a 50’ish wannabe cowboy; and JP, a dangerous violent gun runner who has spent 3 years in jail after being betrayed by his then partner. Nathalie, who lives with her son Jackson, is the bartender at the El Dorado who for some reason is not allowed by Laurent to leave the ranch. Undercover 2 is not about justice – it’s about revenge. Ferry wants revenge on Bob – who he discovers killed his friend and partner John the previous year. Bob wants revenge on the Berger Brothers who killed his partner, friend, and ex-lover Kim. Nathalie wants revenge on Laurent and JP who have her trapped at the ranch because of Jackson. The plot is intricate, the acting superb – and ‘Undercover – Season 2’ is one of the best series on Netflix this year.
Unit 42 (Unité 42)
Season 1 – 10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each – French with English subtitles
3 out of 5 Paws
Season 2 – 10 Episodes of approx. 50 minutes each - TBA
Sam, a newly widowed cop with 3 children, is assigned on his first day back on the job to lead a special cybercrimes unit. His new partners include Billie, a former hacker with secrets of her own, Nassim, a computer genius, Bob an old-time cop, and Alice, a deaf pathologist. Together they hunt down tech-savvy criminals who are terrorizing Belgium. Each episode is a different crime while following the homelife of Sam coping with his children as well as uncovering Billie’s secrets. In the first 5 episodes Sam and Billie deal with webcam monitoring, ISIS terrorists, hackers exposing corruption, S and M bondage clubs, political kidnapping – you get the idea. Interesting plots with solid acting Unit 42 has been renewed for a second season airing on Belgian TV in November 2019. However, I didn’t enjoy that the camera action was frenetic, the plots became a little repetitious, and the main antagonists always seem to show up and be exposed in the last couple of minutes. I stopped watching after the 6th episode as it was starting to get a little predictable and boring.