[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/engranage_6012.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Left to right: [[TheLeader Laure Berthaud]], [[ByTheBookCop Fromentin]], [[CowboyCop Gilou]], [[ManipulativeBastard François Roban]], [[HelloAttorney Pierre Clément]], [[AmoralAttorney Joséphine Karlsson]]]]

''Engrenages'' (literally "cogs" or "gears", but [[DoubleMeaningTitle with implications akin to "wheels within wheels" and "spiralling out of control"]]), 2005-2020, known in English-speaking markets as ''Spiral'', is a French PoliceProcedural CrimeAndPunishmentSeries set in the less touristy parts of Paris. The three main protagonists play different roles in the French justice system: Capitaine Laure Berthaud represents the police, Maitre Pierre Clément is a prosecutor, and François Roban is an examining magistrate. Clément is written out in the fifth season, and Joséphine Karlsson, previously his AmoralAttorney foil, takes over as a leading character.

The first season deals with the murder of a Romanian prostitute that turns out to have heavy political connections. The second season covers an investigation into a group of North African gangsters. Both of these two seasons also have MysteryOfTheWeek elements, but the third season dumps this in favour of putting the three characters into separate plot arcs: Berthaud hunts a SerialKiller of prostitutes in Paris's former abbatoir district; Clément, disgusted with politics and corruption, attempts to set up as an independent lawyer; and Roban starts a quixotic investigation into a corrupt mayor with very high-level connections. The fourth season dives into the French debate over illegal immigration, with a far-left-wing terrorist group attacking people who they consider responsible for treating immigrants unjustly. The fifth season sees the investigation into the dead bodies of a mother and daughter discovered in a canal uncovering a chaotic labyrinth of street-level crime. In the sixth season, Berthaud and her team investigate the gruesome murder of a young police officer; an ailing Roban has to deal with the suspicious death of an elite graduate student and part-time [[HighClassCallGirl High Class Call Boy]]; and Karlsson takes on the defense of a wealthy young man accused of murdering his abusive father. In the seventh season, the characters find themselves investigating the murder of a senior policeman who was shot dead along with the owner of a Chinese restaurant, what initially appears to be an armed robbery gone wrong turns out to be connected with a rather more complex criminal network. Meanwhile, Karlsson attempts to rebuild her life and career. The eighth and final season has Laure's team investigating the murder of an Algerian street kid, while Gilou is allowed out of jail to go undercover with a gangster released at the same time.

After first achieving high critical acclaim in its native France on Canal+, the show was aired (and eventually co-funded) by Creator/TheBBC in 2006, and has [[SleeperHit since developed]] a loyal international fanbase. In the UK at least seems to have [[FollowTheLeader paved the way]] for a great deal of imported European gritty cop dramas. The show has proved so successful that after the third season ''three'' more were ordered simultaneously.

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!!This show provides examples of:
* AffablyEvil: A lot of people fit : Szabo, [[spoiler:Laborde]], Mustapha Larbi, even Michel the Romanian. Depending on the "evil", also Karlsson. And of course Jesus, the most sympathetic person to ever hack people into bits.
* AmoralAttorney: Karlsson, and even more so Szabo. [[spoiler:In the fourth season, Karlsson gets less amoral, but Pierre goes well on the way to replacing her.]]
* AnarchyIsChaos: Thomas' crew in season 4. Contrasted with the more principled and less violent Christophe.
* AntiHero: It goes without saying. Laure is type II, Gilou closer to type III.
* AntiVillain: The elder Ozbek son is a freedom fighter who helps [[LaResistance his people]] by dealing weapons. The younger, on the other hand, is just a thug.
* AscendedExtra: Ali Amrani is introduced as one of the background members of Laure's team in the seventh season but becomes a main character in the eighth.
* AssholeVictim: In the fifth season, [[spoiler:Zach Gabbaï, an armed robber and murderer, gets beaten to death by two drug dealers who he didn't pay fast enough.]]
* AteHisGun: [[spoiler:Jolers shoots himself through the mouth in front of his colleagues]] in S6, after he's implicated in the murder [[spoiler:of one of his partners.]] Although it was someone else's gun.
* BaitAndSwitchTyrant: Beckriche, Laure's new boss in S6, is initially introduced as a bit of a dick whose past in the fraud squad has left him [[SoldiersAtTheRear inexperienced with the rougher kinds of police work]], but turns out to be a good commander.
* BaitTheDog: In the seventh season, [[spoiler:Edelman appears to be genuinely trying to help Karlsson, but it turns out that he's deliberately trying to hold up her rehabilitation to force her to work for him.]]
* BastardUnderstudy: All over the place (and to varying degrees of eventual success), most notably with Roban/Pierre and Szabo/Karlsson.
* BeardOfEvil: Inverted. In the sixth season, Herville's growth of a beard coincides with his complete HeelFaceTurn.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Between [[spoiler:Beckriche and Bourdieu]] in the final season. [[spoiler:Their relationship consists of her constantly chewing him out for his team's bending of the rules for the first half of the season, until they start dating.]]
* BerserkButton: Anything police-related for Joséphine.
* BigBadDuumvirate: The Larbi brothers in the second season.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The final scene of the final season. Gilou has managed to get out of his undercover work alive and out of jail, and he and Laure are implied to be romantically together, but Laure has resigned from the police after being held at gunpoint by Cisco was the final straw for her.]]
* BlackAndGreyMorality: In the course of investigating some pretty horrendous crimes, even the [[AntiHero good guys]] skirt on the very edges of what's ethically and morally right.
%%* BombThrowingAnarchists: {{Averted}}, because the artificer was literally HoistByHisOwnPetard. Then {{played straight}} with the bombing of the [[spoiler:police headquarters in Paris.]]
* BornDetective: Laure was born to be a cop, and can't think of her life otherwise. Gilou is also very good at reading crime scenes.
* BrainsAndBondage: While investigating a rape case, Roban reveals that he knows a suspicious amount about the practicalities of suspension bondage.
* BreakTheHaughty: Everything that happens to Joséphine in season 4. [[spoiler:She even attempts to [[DrivenToSuicide kill herself]] when Pierre dumps her.]]
** BreakTheCutie: [[spoiler:Heavily implied in her past]]
* BrokenBird: Implied for [[spoiler:Joséphine]].
* ButchLesbian: In the fifth season, leading GangBanger Karen "Oz" Hoarau is heavily implied to be one.
* ByTheBookCop: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] with Fromentin, who is lawful at heart, but will [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight stick to]] [[TrueCompanions his friends]] when needed.
* CharacterDevelopment: Karlsson goes through a lot of this, [[HumiliationConga especially in Season 4]].
* TheChessmaster: Roban.
** Szabo disappears without explanation after the third season, after being a significant character up to that point (in real life, the actor had other things to do).
* CliffHanger: [[spoiler:The fifth season ending, with Laure's pregnancy hanging in the balance after she jumped into a river in a failed attempt to stop Oz from killing herself. The sixth season reveals that the child was born severely premature, possibly as a result.]]
* CommanderContrarian: Herville in the fourth season, no matter what Laure does. He becomes nicer in the fifth season.
* ContrastingReplacementCharacter: In the final season, the wiley, elderly, male magistrate Roban is replaced by young by-the-book female magistrate Lucie Bourdieu.
* CopHater: Karlsson hates the police in general, because when she was a child the local cops covered up her mother being abused by her father because he was a judge, which eventually led to her mother killing herself.
* CowboyCop: Gilou. Laure has her moments.
* CrapsackWorld: This is very much the side of France that the tourist board would rather have you not see, in a setting that draws inevitable comparisons to ''Series/TheWire''.
* DeadpanSnarker: Judge Roban.
* DeathOfAChild: Several in the course of the series.
** In a Season 1 subplot, Roban has to investigate the brutal murder of a baby by its mentally unstable babysitter. [[spoiler: His decision to declare the babysitter incompetent to stand trial plunges the mother into deep despair, leading to her suicide.]]
** The murder of Lucie Jolin and her mother is what kicks off the plot of Season 5.
** [[spoiler:In the penultimate episode of the final season, just when it looks as if Karlsson and Edelman have set Souleyman's life on the right track, he goes out looking for drugs, runs into Titi and gets murdered.]]
* DefinitelyJustACold: Roban suffers repeated nosebleeds throughout the fifth season but refuses to seek any medical help. It still isn't resolved by the end of the season. [[spoiler:In the sixth season he turns out to be suffering from a brain tumour, but continues to procrastinate getting treatment for it despite suffering physical weakness and moments of forgetfulness and confusion.]]
* DirtyCop:
** "Le Requin" (the shark) in S3, who hunts down runaway hookers and returns them to their pimps.
** Jolers and Calvi in S6, as well as the InternalAffairs guy who was supposed to be investigating them.
* DisproportionateRetribution: Karlsson puts a guy behind bars because he insulted her. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] since he was guilty, but she was supposed to be her lawyer.
* DistractedByTheSexy: Used by Joséphine to get an incriminating camera without having Pierre noticing.
* TheDogBitesBack: You do not want to betray Machard's ambitions.
* DoggedNiceGuy: The fifth season reveals that Gilou has developed these kinds of feelings for Laure. When she reacts in an unambiguously negative way, his self-destructive side comes out again big time.
* DomesticAbuse: [[spoiler:Karlsson's father, by implication, if not [[ParentalIncest worse]]]].
* DownerEnding:
** Season 4, big time. [[spoiler:Sami dies, and BigBad Riffaud gets away.]]
** Season 6 ends with the main investigation concluded in a moderately successful and morally-satisfying way, but is '''horrible''' for all the major characters personally. [[spoiler:Laure, on the point of finally taking Romy home and setting up a family with Gilou, panics and in the season's final shot literally runs off into the distance from the hospital; Roban is forced into sick leave and is told that even if his cancer can be sent into remission enough for him to return to work, it's incurable; Karlsson is prosecuted for the attempted murder of her rapist and, even if she manages to avoid jail, faces the end of her career; Fromentin, after getting divorced from his wife, ends up asking to be transferred out of Laure's squad in disgust at her general rule-bending, and in particular at her covering up Gilou's latest screw-up while also having an affair with him; Herville's police station has been rocked by general revelations of corruption and by a cop gorily killing himself in front of all his colleagues after being discovered to have been complicit in the murder of his partner.]]
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Arnaud]]. Also [[spoiler:Karlsson]], even if it doesn't work [[spoiler: she's found by her landlord after she floods the flat downstairs]].
** Lola was charged with causing a man's suicide after she blackmailed him with sexually explicit videos of him.
* DysfunctionJunction: all the way through, but the third season takes it up to eleven.
* EnemyMine:
** In season 4, when [[spoiler:Machard]] sides with Roban.
** In season 5, where Roban and Karlsson team up to uncover a conspiracy to frame a semi-innocent man for the death of a policeman who was actually accidentally killed by other cops.
* EqualOpportunityEvil: In the fifth season, Oz's all-girl street gang has both black and white members.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: The Larbi brothers care for each other, and for their families. [[spoiler:Until Farouk learns about his wife and Mus.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: [[spoiler:The Larbi brothers]] seem genuinely disgusted when [[spoiler:Aziz]] abducts a child who testified against him.
* EvilCounterpart: Karlsson to Pierre. And then, in season 4, [[spoiler:Pierre to Karlsson]].
* EveryoneLooksSexierIfFrench: [[ZigZaggingTrope Averted as much as it's played straight]]. Whilst Pierre and Joséphine always manage to look incredibly elegant, Laure always gives the impression she's about to fall apart and Gilou perpetually looks like he's coming down off a 3-day bender. Many ancillary characters even exhibit {{gonk}}-like tendencies.
* EvilMatriarch: Layla Ozbekis both playing this trope straight and [[SubvertedTrope subverting it]] : she is a mob boss, but she genuinely loves her sons.
* EvilMentor: Szabo to Karlsson. [[spoiler:In the fourth season, Gilou to Amina.]]
* ExternalCombustion: Courtesy of [[spoiler:Mrs Jorkal]].
* TheFagin: Bilal in the final season has a network of street kids who steal mobile phones for him. He's pretty uncaring towards them although he has enough of a conscience to [[spoiler:tell the police when Souleyman gets grabbed by more serious gangsters right outside his shop]].
* FalseRapeAccusation: [[spoiler: Guy-on-guy, when Pierre is accused by a troubled teenage male client]].
* {{Fanservice}}: It's a French work, so there's a fair amount of nudity, male and female. Berthaud herself even has a sex scene!
* AFatherToHisMen: Laure is a [[GenderFlip gender flipped]] version of this; she cares deeply about her fellow police officers and goes to all sorts of lengths to protect them.
* FauxAffablyEvil: Johnny Jorkal pretends to be a cuddly old [[NeighbourhoodFriendlyGangsters Neighbourhood Friendly Gangster]] but is actually utterly ruthless and malignant.
* FauxYay: In the eighth season, when Gilou and Titi are spying on the Alsatian[[note]]As in a man from Alsace, not a dog[[/note]] and his drug suppliers in a hotel, Titi goes overboard with horseplay and they crash into the wall between their room and the Alsatians. When a gangster suspiciously comes to their door they, having stripped down to bath towels, pretend to be a gay couple and imply that they were having a bit of rough sex.
* FemmeFatale: A persona that is deliberately and frequently [[InvokedTrope invoked]] by Karlsson in-universe. Eventually, it comes back to haunt her.
* FieryRedhead: Inverted, the redhead Karlsson is usually very cold-blooded and calculating.
* FireForgedFriends: Bertaud and Herville, by the end of season five.
* FreudianExcuse: Karlsson hates cops because [[spoiler:they knew her father was abusing her mother, and did nothing about it because he was a judge, as a result of which her mother killed herself.]]
** Lola has nothing but contempt for men, using and abusing them in part because [[spoiler: of her abusive childhood with [[ParentalRape a father who raped her]] while her mother stood by.]] However, she forbids Karlsson from mentioning any of it during the trial, and Karlsson respects Lola's choice by only alluding to the fact that she has lived through complex trauma, without giving any details, and trusting the judge to take that into consideration.
* FriendOrIdolDecision: Herville is offered the promotion he's been trying to get for over two seasons, if he agrees to let Gilou be blamed for morally dubious acts he ordered him to do. [[spoiler:He does the right thing.]]
* FriendsRentControl: Averted with Karlsson; it's made clear that with her lavish house and lifestyle she is living well beyond her means, which opens her up to becoming a full-blown AmoralAttorney.
* GanglandDriveBy: A man is gunned down in front of Pierre's house by a motorcycle pillion passenger, because of Pierre's flirtation with being a gangster-servicing AmoralAttorney. This leads Pierre to a moral crisis.
* {{Gayngst}}: In the sixth season [[spoiler:Machard is forced to confess to Roban that he is gay and closeted, and that he was the mysterious client who was present when a high-class gay prostitute died from an accidental drug overdose. Roban's decision not to bring proceedings reduces him to tears.]]
* GayParee: Very much averted, almost to the point of SceneryGorn.
* GenericEthnicCrimeGang: Eastern Europeans in the first and third seasons, North Africans in the second and fourth, and also Kurds in the fourth. The fourth season also finally has a gang boss with French ancestry. The fifth season averts this by having a racially-integrated GangBanger crew.
* GirlsBehindBars: [[spoiler:Karlsson's arc in the seventh season, in which she's in a realistically-depicted women's prison awaiting trial for attempted murder.]]
* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: [[spoiler:Berthaud finally decides to stay pregnant in the fifth season, after going as far as booking an appointment. Then she ends up potentially losing the baby in the end of season cliffhanger.]]
* GratuitousRape: The fifth season has a graphic rape scene where a minor member of Oz's female GangBanger crew is raped by a security guard at an office that she was stealing information from. The two characters are extremely minor (the man's literal sole purpose is to appear, commit the rape, and then only appear in one more scene in the season, being questioned by the cops), the rape has absolutely no impact on the plot, and it seems to have been put in solely to dial up the CrapsackWorld atmosphere.
* GutFeeling: Part of the CowboyCop panoply. Especially Laure with [[spoiler:Ronaldo]].
* HeelFaceTurn:
** Karlsson, at least when it comes to her job. With Szabo, she is as evil a lawyer can be. In season 4, she helps migrants that were fired by their [[CorruptCorporateExecutive boss]].
** After being introduced with a severe case of PointyHairedBoss in the fourth season, and mellowing slightly in the fifth, Herville turns up again in the sixth having seemingly become AFatherToHisMen after taking command of a police station in a very poor and rough suburb.
* HelloAttorney: Joséphine and Pierre.
* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler:Fromentin]] after he gets shot and nearly dies.
* HeroicSacrifice: At the end of the seventh season [[spoiler:Gilou takes full responsibility for the mess over his and Laure's blackmail of Solignac, exonerating her and ending his career at the very least.]]
* HighClassCallGirl: Nicolas, Roban's possible murder victim in the sixth season, was a student at the Sciences Po, one of the elite "grandes ecoles" of the French higher education system, who supplemented his money by working as a high class gay male prostitute.
* HookerWithAHeartOfGold: Alyssa in season one, who sincerely cares about Gilou. Patricia in season three is a mild example.
* HourglassPlot: [[spoiler:Pierre and Karlsson in the fourth season]].
* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: one of the subplots of the third season has Gilou firing a wild shot in the air during a fracas in a crack house and unintentionally hitting a dealer [[GroinAttack in the crotch]].
* TheIllegal: The fourth season is based around illegal immigrants and the French politics surrounding them.
* IncorruptiblePurePureness: Roban is a more cynical version, advancing the cause of justice no matter what. If you get a speeding ticket in Paris, you '''will''' pay the fine, whether you are the LittlestCancerPatient or the president of France. He (almost) never schemes or bends rules unless it is in direct defense against interference with justice.
* TheInfiltration:
** Sami's job.
** Gilou is sent undercover with a gangster in the final season.
* InLoveWithTheMark: [[spoiler: Berthaud with Brémont in the third season]]
* InfractionDistraction: [[spoiler:Used by Karlsson to smuggle Youssef across the Spanish-French border in the final season - she buys a load of untaxed cigarettes from a pedlar and puts them on top of Youssef in her car's trunk. Once the border guards find them they immediately seize them from her and don't bother to search the car any further.]]
* InternalAffairs: Consequence of the CowboyCop tendencies.
* ItAmusedMe: Why Szabo doesn't fire Karlsson [[spoiler:after she tried to cross him]]. Because [[GoodIsBoring honest lawyers are boring]].
* JackTheRipoff: [[spoiler:In the third season, the Albanians kill one of their prostitutes in a copy of Ronaldo's MO, so they can make it appear that he's innocent and keep using him as a threat to keep the women under control.]]
* JeanneDArchetype: [[spoiler:Sophie Mazerat ends up thinking that she is.]]
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Roban, sometimes verging on AmbiguouslyEvil
** Karlsson, when she is not a JerkWithAHeartOfJerk.
* JurisdictionFriction: In season 4, the DCRI counter-terrorism agents and the DPJ risk lives and sabotage each other because their bosses are vying for the same promotion.
* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Thomas Riffaud]] gets away scot free.
* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:Thomas beating up Christophe for breaking with him, after Christophe lied to the cops for him.]]
* KilledOffForReal:
** [[spoiler:Clément is accidentally shot dead during a hostage situation halfway through the fifth series.]]
** [[spoiler:Herville is murdered at the beginning of the seventh season.]]
* LanguageFluencyDenial: Souleyman in the final season keeps the fact that he can understand French secret from most people.
* TheLastDJ: Roban in the later seasons.
* MamasBabyPapasMaybe: [[spoiler:In the fifth season, Lucie turns out to have been Zach's daughter, not Stéphane's.]]
* MandatoryUnretirement: [[spoiler:At the start of the seventh season, Laure is persuaded to come off mental-health leave to help investigate Herville's murder.]]
* [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bitch]]: Karlsson. Most other characters find themselves having to step into the role of ManipulativeBastard as well at various points throughout the series.
* MarriedToTheJob: Laure and Roban.
* MayorPain: The corrupt mayor of Villedieu.
* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: There are shades of this all over the place, but most obviously Roban's investigation of a corrupt mayor is instigated by a security guard's dog attacking a child.
* MistakenIdentity: Sami's first meeting with the police team - almost a case of MistakenForServant. Everyone assumes he's been brought here for interrogation, and talks down to him.
** It's worth remembering Sami is of North African appearance.
* TheMole: [[spoiler:Gilou]] in season one.
* MurderSimulators: One of the cases of the week in the second season has a troubled teenager who goes on a shooting rampage that initially gets blamed on his first-person-shooter habit. It turns out that the shooting spree (which didn't actually harm anyone) was an attempt at SuicideByCop after he murdered his online girlfriend when she rejected him at their first face-to-face meeting.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
** Pierre when [[spoiler:some thugs threaten to kill him because Jorkal - Pierre's client - didn't pay them.]]
** Roban after [[spoiler:his unrelenting pursuit of a man who turned out to be innocent causes Pierre's death.]]
* MysteryOfTheWeek: Included in many episodes of the first two seasons, but dropped in the later ones, which had more than one StoryArc instead.
* NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead: [[spoiler:Herville's]] funeral has all the characters deeply grieving for and fulsomely eulogising him, despite what an arsehole he was when first introduced.
* NewSeasonNewName: The English marketing gave the third and fourth seasons specific subtitles: the third is subtitled "The Butcher of La Villette" and the fourth "State of Terror".
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Tintin to a suspect who [[DisproportionateRetribution insulted his wife]].
* NobodyCallsMeChicken: In the fifth season, Karlsson persuades an intimidated witness to turn up in court by hinting that he's scared in front of his mates. (Plus a bit of flirting.)
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Most of the higher-ups wear this hat from time to time, but Machard excels at this.
* OhCrap: A rare heroic ''and'' positive version, when Roban discovers that [[spoiler:Machard]] isn't gonna deny his request.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Fromentin is nearly always called "Tintin".
* PayEvilUntoEvil: In the sixth season, Karlsson is determined to defend Thomas Weber because [[spoiler:he killed his abusive father, and she is entirely sympathetic because she wishes she'd had the guts to do the same to her own]].
* PerpSweating: various ways, ''usually'' legal ones.
** GoodCopBadCop
** InterrogationByVandalism: to a {{Meido}} in season two.
** JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: Gilou in season one, with a hammer. [[spoiler:He was high, and it didn't work]]. Laure in season two, with gasoline.
** RabidCop
* PetTheDog: Mustapha caring about [[spoiler:Rachid's]] widow.
** Joséphine warning the immigrants before the Police arrives.
* PointyHairedBoss: Herville in the fourth season.
* PragmaticVillainy: Thomas Riffaut [[spoiler:decides to give up, run away and live to fight another day when his getaway driver is arrested. He also abandons Sophie when she decides to carry on, [[{{Jerkass}} hanging up on her and destroying his phone]] the moment he realizes she won't get away.]]
* PutOnABus:
** [[spoiler:Fromentin leaves the team at the end of season six after falling out with Laure and Gilou, although he returns for a few episodes in the seventh season having joined InternalAffairs.]]
** [[spoiler:Roban is finally forced into retirement at the end of season seven.]]
* PyrrhicVictory: A major one for [[spoiler:Roban]] in season 3.
* RapeAsDrama: In the sixth season, [[spoiler:Karlsson wakes up in the street with her underwear missing, obvious signs of sex, and no memory of the night before after she went for drinks with some colleagues. Her immediate assumption is that she was drug-raped, and she starts her own investigation with Laure's covert help as to who the perp was.]]
* ReassignedToAntarctica:
** After annoying his superiors once too often, Pierre is moved from presiding over criminal cases to traffic offences, a boring role that prompts him to resign.
** Roban often suffers the same fate. The case of the boy mauled by a dog is mentioned above; season 4 starts out with broken Christmas decorations and seniors stealing from each other (and the case of a rapist that no one wants reopened).
** At the end of season five, Herville is reassigned to St-Denis (a horrible fate) after refusing to shaft Gilou to save his career.
* RedOniBlueOni: Even if Laure is a cop (also called ''Les Bleus'' - the Blues), and if Joséphine is a redhead, Laure is red and Joséphine is blue.
* SanityBall: Gilou astonishingly takes it in the fifth season, where he is for once acting level-headedly and professionally while Laure and Fromentin are both falling apart. He then backslides severely after Laure bluntly rebuffs his DoggedNiceGuy tendencies towards her.
* SenselessSacrifice: [[spoiler:Sami's attempt at amateur bomb-disposal after the building had been evacuated.]]
* SexSlave: The Eastern European pimps in the third season treat their hookers as such.
* SexyShirtSwitch: Horribly subverted when [[spoiler: When we see Joséphine wearing Pierre's shirt... because he's just died]].
* SharpDressedMan:
** When Pierre isn't wearing his judicial robes, he's rarely seen without a ''very'' sharp suit.
** Brémont also often wears nice suits, contrasting with the more casual clothes of Laure's team.
** Beckriche is sharp-suited and hardly ever removes his very nice woolen overcoat. While Bremont is frequently unshaven, Beckriche's hair is always ''perfect''.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: In the fifth season, after several episodes have been spent pursuing [[spoiler:Zach and he's been himself murdered, it's finally discovered that he was out of the country at the time of the double killing.]]
* TheStoolPigeon: Many, but Djibril in the fifth series is depicted in a particularly in-depth way.
* StrawMisogynist: Both anarchist leaders behave like [[{{Jerkass}} total jerks]] towards Sophie. One rapes her, the other uses her - [[AllLoveIsUnrequited but she loves him nonetheless]].
* StreetUrchin: The final season deals heavily with [[TheIllegal illegal]] North African street urchins and their horrible lives.
* SurprisePregnancy: [[spoiler:Laure didn't bother to check up on why she was missing periods, meaning that she didn't discover she was pregnant until it was too late to get an abortion easily under French law.]]
* TeethClenchedTeamWork: Herville attempts this with Laure in season 5, as he's desperate for a successful murder investigation to save his career after the screw-up at the end of season 4.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Laure and Karlsson.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: In the sixth season, the Camara brothers are officially former gangsters gone straight and turned philanthropists and community organizers, while actually still deeply involved in crime.
* VisualPun: Quite a few
** Gilou sniffs his coke using his Vitale card (which you use to buy legal drugs)
** When his friend Benoit wakes him up after their fight [[spoiler:when Clément learned that he knew Elina's sister]], "Truth" and "Reality" are written on Clément's shirt.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Herville and Berthaud (and her team) after his HeelFaceTurn and him being ReassignedToAntarctica in season 6.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: In S6, Gilou's girlfriend Cindy just drops out of the show after it's revealed that [[spoiler:she lied about needing money for her mother in a nursing home (said mother had died five years previously)]], even though they'd just bought a flat together.
* WhosYourDaddy: [[spoiler:Laure's pregnancy in season 5 may be by either Sami or Bremont.]]
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