César Wagner

Just finished watching this excellent series and happy to recommend it. I hope they make further episodes.

Each episode is a separate story but there is linkage between them as the characters are developed. It's rather tongue in cheek in the way it is written and there are a lot of amusing asides with the budding romances and spats between characters.

The quality of acting and direction is very good although I'd never seen any of the cast in another production. It's in the vein of the wonderful Sicilian Inspector Montelbano series with the filming locations and incidental scenes as important as the plot development.

The hypochondriac Wagner deserves special mention for the way he adds humour to his role without allowing it to become banal or too repetitive.

Cesar Wagner is the same type of character as featured in the great first two series of the Belgian comedic drama Professor T.

This doesn't work as well. For a start the support characters are weak by comparison and the storylines are too complicated. Maybe that is because I was reading subtitles, but the second episode particularly was hard to follow and in the end I didn't really understand what happened or why. It was a very gruesome episode as well.

After the first two feature length episodes I decided to give up on the rest as I was finding it boring and not holding my attention.

Rather a wasted opportunity, I feel. It could have been good.

French acting at its best with a twisting plot and gem moments of cute comedy. The plots cover all angles of crime whilst not hiding the true details of the human problems of a multi-cultural city. The supporting Police crue are also superb. Didn't realise that a Police station in France is called Hotel of Police!

Cesar Wagner is an obsessive hypochondriac with a flair for solving mysteries. Sound familiar? Well if you've see Monk, Professor T or other variations this is another twist on that same theme. Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery and this series does a good job of continuing that theme. We watch it in French with English subtitles and didn't get bored with any of the episodes. According to the episode synopsis there should be at least 2 more coming and we look forward to seeing them. Nice cast of characters, good location shots, interesting sort of love triangle, all in all a clever and entertaining show.