Salamander

The latest foreign detective series on BBC4 on Saturday evenings, Salamander is unusually a Belgian production. The first thing I noticed was that the characters were nearly all speaking Flemish, and I had to look up which parts of Belgium spoke that language and which part French.

The Chief Inspector of Police, Paul Geradi, is caught in the middle of the bank robbers and the bank itself. Both object to his interference and both want him dead. An interesting twist. Each side has it's enforcer, so Geradi has a lot on his plate. As the series develops, we are also treated to the back story of a Belgian Resistance group in 1944 whose Operation Salamander is the cause of the problem. The final episode is full of tension, and the ending is terrific. A nice alternative to Scandinavian crime.