The six-episode police procedural miniseries from France, “Riviere-Perdue,” covers a related series of crimes in six 52-minute episodes. Its tone is more somber than most of the European TV fare I’ve reviewed – almost Nordic in tenor. But the setting is a village nestled in lush mountain greenery that makes it a visual treat, including all the standard driving transition scenes with overhead shots well above average on the beauty scale.
The star is Captain Alix Berg (Barbara Cabrita) who specializes in juvenile cases. She and an older homicide colleague, Commissaire Balthus (Jean-Michel Tinivelli), come to the eponymous town because two 11-year-old girls, Anna (Charlotte Lacoste) and Lucie (Camille Petit), went missing five years earlier, but staunch public pressure to find them endures. Their parents aren’t wealthy, and no ransoms were demanded, making some sort of perversion or trafficking most likely.
Ferrer (Nicolas Gob), the local lead cop, is still kicking himself for not realizing there had been a crime from the get-go, possibly making the recovery harder than it became. There’s a lot of anger and suspicion among the two families and others who may have been involved. The whole town is up in arms about the lack of resolution. The upside for viewers is that quite a few cast members get to display a wide range of their dramatic chops.
Some new evidence leads to the suspicion that an abduction from seven years before this one might have been done by the same perp or perps. Anna is rescued by a trucker in the early going but says little about her five years in captivity, including how much of the time she was with Lucie. Some of that may be due to emotional trauma and a head injury, but she also seems more secretive that she should be – especially since Lucie’s whereabouts remain unknown. Most of the running time centers around the search for Lucie, as the three detectives ricochet among a number of suspects, pursuing each clue that pops up regarding the old and new cases.
MHz Choice subscribers may recognize Gob from the light mystery series “The Art of Crime,” and Bruno Debrandt from the episodic procedural drama “The Traveller.” I’ve enjoyed both series, as my reviews of them reflect. This one is more serious and mystifying than those others. That’s partly due to the nature of the crimes running through the season, and all the dicey reactions and shifting relations among the principals that ebb and flow at a high and often extreme rate. As usual, there’s no nudity and relatively little on-screen violence. Beyond that, the less you know of the details, the more you’ll savor the suspense and its handful of plot twists.
“Riviere-Perdue” Season 1, mostly in French with English subtitles, is available via on MHz Choice starting Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025.
RATING: 2 out of 4 stars
