The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 4, Episode 5 - April 17, 2025 - "Antique Antics"

A popular antiques pricing tv show called "Antique Antics" has come to Sainte Victoire to film an episode.

The two main hosts, Elaine and Nick, play likeable characters on it, but are rude and snooty off-screen. The other experts on the show are old friends of Jean, though, and she is happy to re-connect with them. Jeremy and Judith have offered up their "summer home" for the shooting and are eager to pitch in and help as well when it turns out that the crew have been delayed at the airport. Jeremy takes care of the snacks...

and Judith is appointed the makeup person....

Gloria has brought in some art to have evaluated and Elaine explains that it is a lithograph worth 600 pounds! She is delighted. After the shoot, they are wrapping things up outside when they hear a scream inside. It is Gloria, who had been talking to Elaine...who suddenly collapses!

Help is called...

But it is too late, Elaine has died. Gloria is overcome and must go lie down. It is determined Elaine has been poisoned. And no one can leave until the investigation is over.

Gloria needs her medication, and enlists Jeremy and Judith to sneak off the grounds to go get it.

Meanwhile, crew and fans are being questioned. Is the killer the antique expert who had been in the running with Elaine for a spot on a new show that was in the works? He had been seen giving her a bottle of water before the show. Or is it the guy who everyone thinks is a crazed fan, whom had just happened to have given Jeremy a box of chocolates to pass along to her? When Jean watches the footage, she notices that a chocolate had been eaten...so, aha! It must've been the crazed fan! Except...

Jeremy and Judith are back and reveal that THEY had eaten all the rest of the chocolates, and have NOT been poisoned. So, the chocolate guy has been ruled out.

This was a pretty fun episode. I won't reveal who the killer winds up being or why this person did it, but it's not too hard to have figured out from the little clues along the way.

I'm trying to get through these episodes quickly before my 2 months of reduced-price Acorn subscription is up near the end of January, so enjoy this flurry of posts after such a long period of quiet, ha ha!

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 4, Episode 4 - April 10, 2025 - "The Blueprint"

We're skipping over episode 3 "Bad Education" because Robin's Jeremy does not appear in it, although he is mentioned by Judith when she attends an auction looking for a gift for his upcoming birthday.

In "The Blueprint" Jean is given a paid trip to Malta in order to authenticate some ancient blueprints from the 1500s. She brings along Dom so they can have sort of a romantic getaway as well. However, murder seems to follow her wherever she goes, and right when she is about to meet up with the woman who has the blueprints, the woman is attacked and later dies from her injuries. Jean knows she now needs to find out why.

BUT, back home, another crime has happened. Gloria's dad is visiting and has borrowed Dom's car while he is away. Only to immediately be involved in an accident where he hits a person who comes out of nowhere. Later, he is telling people about it at the pub and Jeremy and Judith mention that the same exact thing had happened to them, some months back!

Which had resulted in them having to pay thousands to settle it outside of the insurance companies. It dawns on everyone that this just MIGHT be a scam....

The group decide to take matters into their own hands and expose the scam. Judith takes charge and comes up with a daring plan...

They stake out the stoplight where the incident seems to occur and take some video. After one mishap, they finally get what they need.

The police are called, and the group is happy and satisfied with a job well done! ha ha

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 4, Episode 2 - March 27, 2025 - "Inheritance"

This episode starts out with shopkeeper Charlie's aunt Fifi getting poisoned with mustard gas while cleaning the bathroom of the shop. We see an unknown man lock her in and then slip away as she slowly dies on the floor. So, that's the mystery that Jean needs to figure out this time. Nothing to do with Robin's Jeremy, so that's really all I'll say about the main plot.

He is instead given the silly side story of stepping in and offering to babysit Gloria's dog while she recovers from spraining her ankle.

Much to Judith's dismay...

You see, Judith had left a bucket out, which Gloria had tripped over, so Jeremy's main concern is that she may sue them.

So, they take the dog back to their Chateau, and of course, he escapes.

Luckily, Steve comes across the dog while out driving, and lets Jeremy know.

They go retrieve him, put him in the back of their convertable, and congratulate themselves for a job well done.

And then the dog promptly jumps out of the car and is on the run again. And again, Steve finds and returns him, all the while Jeremy stalling Gloria, who is ready for him to come back. He convinces her that they are just having too fun of a time with the dog.

Eventually, Gloria and Dog are reunited, with her none the wiser about what's been going on. She totally believes that Jeremy and Judith just had the time of their lives playing with him, because all dog owners definitely think that it's impossible for anyone NOT to enjoy their dog as much as they do, ha ha. So she happily tells them that they'll be first in line to call for dogsitting duties whenever she's out of town!

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 4, Episode 1 - March 20, 2025 - "Beach Club"

There is a businessman staying at the hotel in town that goes missing - only to be found tied up and near death, alone in a boat out at sea....by none other than our Jeremy and Judith, while they are enjoying a day out riding their watercrafts!

They get him back to shore, and it just so happens a doctor is conveniently nearby and takes the man away to his "private hospital"

And then they report the incident to the police.

Later, we find out that the man had died, and now there was to be a murder investigation, so Madame Blanc gets called in to help. She puts all the clues together and gets VERY suspicious about the circumstances... especially when at one point, Jeremy chokes on an olive, and Judith tries to flag the "doctor" over to help and he completes ignores her and drives away. Don't worry, though, it is Steve who winds up saving Jeremy, who is more than grateful!

The silly side story involves the pub's local wine supplier scamming Jeremy and Judith by re-labeling cheap wine as fancy wine. Uncle Patrick and Gloria have their suspicions and try to warn them, but they are relaxing at the beach club at the time and want to hear none of it.

So Uncle Patrick and Gloria do some sleuthing of their own and are able to set a trap which reveals the scam in the end. And of course, when it is mentioned around Jeremy and Judith, they are clueless, ha ha.

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Christmas Special - Dec 24, 2024

Well Hello! I'm back! Got a "Black Friday" special price on the Acorn channel and am back in business watching Madame Blanc!

Early on in this Christmas episode while the characters are preparing for the festivities, a local puppeteer is mysteriously murdered while giving a show for kids by the beach. So Jean is called and must drop everything to unravel THAT mystery.

Meanwhile, Jeremy and Judith have been given a rather silly side story, in my opinion. They each have been told by their own friends that the priest who had married them 30 years ago hadn't been a real priest and therefore their marriage isn't valid. (Could that actually happen? Wouldn't it have been registered as legal and wouldn't there be paperwork saying they were married?)

Anyway, we see them try to hide the news from each other to avoid upset, but it comes out and they must deal with it.

Judith's main concern is that Jeremy wouldn't WANT to marry her again, but he sets her straight:

Culminating in a happy Christmas wedding!

My Time Capsule Podcast - ep 349 - January 7, 2024

Just popping in to share the link to an episode of a podcast Robin was on! As usual, I found out about it over a year after it aired, but here it is, for anyone else that was unaware.
My Time Capsule Podcast - Episode 349

I listen to a lot of podcasts in general lately, and was happy to find one I'd not known about. Loved listening to Robin chat about his career and joke around. I learned a few new stories. It was cute to hear him talk about how he had to practically jump through hoops to get his part on "Madame Blanc" when he was used to just being handed roles in his younger years. Ha, and now look, he really is the most popular character on the show! The theme of guests picking items they would like to put in a time capsule was pretty interesting, too...a sort of fun little thing to do that's different. Gets the guests thinking, rather than staying in "interview mode"!