The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 2, Episode 6 - February 2, 2023

Robin's character Jeremy did not show up in episode 5, so I am not going to report on that one. But episode 6 is a particularly Jeremy-heavy one!

Jeremy and Judith are hosting an old rock star friend at their manor, who will be using one of their outbuildings to record his comeback album. The guy's name is "Dura" and in the Madame Blanc universe, he was quite a famous prog-rocker type guy back in the day...who still looks incredibly young.

Jeremy is quite excited to be a part of this!

But then, unfortunately, the guy gets murdered and Jean White has to investigate how and why.

Eventually she puts it all together.

And figures out just who is who and what all the people involved have been keeping a secret. Much to the dismay of all the middle aged Dura fans in the village.

Fun little episode. I loved the running joke of Jeremy bragging he'd been compared to Brian Jones back in the day....

As well as trying to go on about his wild lifestyle to anyone who was half listening to him...

Well, not much more to say about this one. One more in this season and then I hear a Christmas episode is coming out soon! Can't wait!

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 2, Episode 4 - January 19, 2023

I love how they snuck a little "Window Cleaner" reference into this one, by having Robin's character Jeremy unload window washing tools for use in cleaning up the new home he and his wife just bought, ha!
Anyway, this episode is happily very Jeremy heavy so that makes for a lot of photos for my blog...

He and his wife Judith have bought a large country estate. I thought they already owned one? But anyway, for some reason they did and were going to use it for some kind of party and had to get it ready fast. Only, the first day they're there, they hear a gunshot and find the former owner dead in one of the rooms.

The police are called and they are told they have to leave for a few days.

Jean White is then called in to solve the mystery, so she arrives with her sidekick Dom to investigate. Now, Jeremy and Judith are NOT pleased with this at all because, like I said, they need to get the place ready for the party ASAP.

So... since Dom has access to the house, Jeremy has an idea...

Dom, needing money badly, is talked into taking measurements of each room while he's in the house so Jeremy and Judith can order all new furnishings or draperies or something. (Not something that can actually be DONE in just two weeks, in my experience!)

So, as for the mystery Jean is working on, she gets it solved in no time, the culprit was very predictable as there just weren't that many characters in this episode to work with. However, she finds out what Dom did when Jeremy lets it slip how Dom had saved the day for them.

So now Jean is mad at Dom and that's how the episode is left hanging. But all is well with our favorite couple, so I say that wraps up another great episode!

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 2, Episode 3 - January 12, 2023

This episode finds the characters at a funeral for a local actress who had been one of the theater committee's members. Now, Robin's Jeremy just happens to be head of the group and is looking to replace her quickly, as they'll lose the right to use the historic theater without the required number of committee members.

The actress's adult daughter is in town for the funeral and winds up finding out a family secret...that she was NOT the daughter of this actress, but instead the actress's sister, who had been murdered in that very theater back in 1974! So...she gets Jean White on the case!

Jean figures out that her mom had been killed because of a priceless gift given to her by her daughter's real dad, a foreign dignitary, which she had hidden somewhere in the theater. They decide the best way to get access to all areas is for the daughter to take her mother's place on the theater committee.

But murder happens again before the episode is through... a poor cleaning guy who Jeremy had bribed to clean the room where the crime had taken place so long ago.....

But, before you know it, Jean has all the loose ends tied up neatly and the killer found and the gift discovered in plain sight.

So, another fun little mystery, all wrapped up!

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 2, Episode 2 - January 5, 2023

Nice that this one starts right off with the focus on Robin's Jeremy character! He's out celebrating with his mates and has way too much to drink.

So, because he ignores his wife Judith's calls, she tells him not to come home and to sleep on their boat that night instead. So he does.

...and wakes up to find a dead body on the deck!

So then he must go to the police, and eventually Jean White gets in on figuring out the mystery. Judith has her suspicions about it being Jeremy's lover and he had killed her! Don't know where THAT came from, but it was kind of funny.
One clue I caught on to right away was the "Afro comb" the victim was found with. Now, I do remember these "combs" being used a lot in the 70s by people with Afros. BUT my family had a whole set of antique cutlery with one of these "combs" among it. I looked it up once and found they are really cake slicers for angel food cake. And, on the show there just happened to be some chefs visiting the town to promote a cookbook. So, I put things together right away, before Jean did!

The Madame Blanc Mysteries - Season 2, Episode 1: "Christmas in Sainte Victoire" - Dec 22, 2022

Yay! Another season of this fun show!

I last watched this show on the Acorn channel, but have since let my subscription expire. BUT I recently found out that our public library system gives us access to a couple streaming channels. One of them, Hoopla, carries this show! What luck!

Jean White is back in this French village and it is Christmastime. Right away the wife of her friend, the Inspecteur André Caron; chief of local police is murdered and he is the only suspect. So she is on the case!

Robin makes an appearance as Santa Claus at the village's Christmas party. He and his wife are adorable in every scene they're in. I'm really enjoying when they're onscreen. They didn't really have anything to do with the main storyline and thus don't get much to do, but hopefully that will improve in later episodes!

C. B. Strike: Season 4: "Troubled Blood" episode 4 - 2023

It's been over a year since I posted the last entry??? How is this possible???

I've been a fan of this show since the beginning, it's on HBOmax here in the U.S. and it is so interesting. So I was happy to see Robin was going to have a guest starring role in an episode of the latest season, "Troubled Blood"! Too bad I had to wait until the 4th and final episode to see him, though.

As this is a murdery mystery show, investigators C.B. Strike and Robin Ellacot are hired by a woman to find her mother, Dr. Margot Bamborough, who is presumed dead after having disappeared in 1974 when the woman was still a child. After lots of twists and turns that will keep you guessing, we are finally led to Robin's character of Steve Douthwaite, aka Steve Jacks, aka Steve Diamond. He had been a patient of Margot's when he was seeing her for some weird stomach ailments he had been experiencing. Since then, all his aliases and moving around and switching jobs led the detectives to suspect he had something to do with her disappearance and try to track him down, finally finding him running a hotel in a small town with his wife, who knows nothing about his past.

I found it amusing as a Robin fan that one of the jobs he had in the past was a worker at a Holiday Camp!

There were lots of flashbacks of Steve as a young man in the '70s, but the guy who played him did not look like Robin at all and I feel they could have done a lot better choosing someone with similar hair and features.

Robin played the role very earnestly and sympathetically. A departure from his usually jokey demeanor and he did a good job at it.

Anyway, I won't give anything away, since I think the identity of the killer was very unpredictable and you will enjoy finding out for yourself how they wrapped up the case!