Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Black Spot’ on Netflix, a Gloomy French Detective Thriller Set in One of the Most Miserable Places on Earth

Netflix recently sneaked the first season of French drama Black Spot onto its sprawling content plate, and watched its viewership spike. It’s easy to see why — its central mystery is an imminently bingeable detective story with supernatural fringes and a dark sense of humor. The show debuted in France in 2017, but is just now enjoying an international audience; its second season will arrive on Netflix on June 14.

BLACK SPOT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An eerie landscape: get an eyeful of this greenish-grey mountain draped in fog, where nothing at all terrible ever happens, no doubt.

The Gist: Welcome to Villefranche, where they drink and they die and they die and they drink. The homicide rate is sextuple the average. It’s a dead zone where cell phones don’t function and “microwaves are fickle.” Everything is damp. Even the dirt there seems extra dirty. It’s a nice place to never visit, and why would anyone ever want to live there?

Three detectives in rain ponchos tromp through the forest, led by Major Weiss (Suliane Brahim). They find a woman’s body hanging from a tree by a noose. Cause of death: stabbing, not hanging, nor by having her eyes pecked out by crows, which also happened. Nothing bad happens in Villefranche that can’t be made worse, apparently.

Coincidentally, the local D.A., Franck Siriani (Laurent Capelluto) is in town, looking into the bevy of murder cases, just as another one ends up on top of the pile. Weiss and co.’s investigation is essentially a guided tour of their small, somber community, where everyone knows each other and wears many dramatic hats. E.g., Bertrand Steiner (Samuel Jouy), who’s three subplots in one character: He’s shutting down the sawmill he owns, upsetting his many employees, and his daughter has been missing for six months, and he also was Weiss’ boyfriend back in high school.

One of the former sawmill workers tried to hang himself in the same tree as the latest murder victim, and has been in a coma for five years, and used to date the murder victim. The victim’s brother is a drug-addled ne’er-do-well. Weiss’ teenage daughter is a troublemaking social activist. At night, all of Villefranche descends upon the local drinking establishment, where the proprietor-bartender keeps the peace with a cattle prod.

Meanwhile, we catch glimpses of a woman, her face obscured by a hood, shackled and chained at the bottom of a drippy gorge. She wails and pounds on the chain with a rock. It’s not non-notable that Weiss is missing two fingers on her left hand — you should see the other guy, a wild boar whose taxidermied head hangs on her wall. You better decide whether you believe that story, and whether Weiss is that tough, before the episode ends, because it’s a fib. In the final moments, Siriani raises and eyebrow, and shows Weiss a 20-year-old article detailing how she went missing for three days. SHE’S the woman in the gorge, and the parting shot shows what really happened to her missing digits.

Our Take: Go ahead and try to resist the autoplay feature after this pilot. It drops us in the thick of it, trapping us in its moody, lightly sardonic muck. It’s terrifically atmospheric, and makes the most of its opportunities for world- and character-building. Villefranche seems like a horrible place to live, but a terrific setting for a TV show.

Certainly, some of it feels derivative. You’ll feel weird Twin Peaks and creepy True Detective vibes, which merge with odd supernatural tones borrowed from the Fargo TV series. The banjo-plucking on the soundtrack and backwoods setting hints at Justified — although the score sometimes evolves into creepy John Carpenteresque synths. Its influences are of fine vintage.

With only one episode, Weiss is already established as a strong central character. She’s tough, she’s quietly charismatic, she’s hiding something. And she’s ultimately fighting to separate the personal from the professional. Brahim shows considerable intensity and screen presence, bringing to mind Madeline Stowe and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Sex and Skin: No time for love in Villefranche thus far. Too busy being pickled and miserable.

Parting Shot: Blood runs down the rock wall as Weiss 127 Hourses her fingers off, so she can get out of those shackles.

Sleeper Star: Juoy is subtly funny and eccentric as Steiner, who’s a key character here — as a newcomer learning the bleak ins and outs of Villefranche, he’s essentially our eyes and ears, an analog for the audience.

Most Pilot-y Line: “The birds are going crazy, the trees are bleeding… it’s going to be a shitty new year,” says Weiss’ detective pal Teddy Bear (Hubert Delattre). That about sums it up.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Black Spot set its hooks quickly and deeply. You’ll likely feel strongly compelled to see if it can sustain that energy for eight episodes, and maybe a second season.

Editor’s Note: Decider is recapping Black Spot. Check out our Black Spot Episode 1 recap today!

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Black Spot on Netflix