Paris Police 1900 is a French Crime and Punishment Series created as an International Coproduction led by StudioCanal. It was broadcast on Canal+ in France and then BBC4 in the UK in 2021. The series is not a cosy, nostalgic Historical Detective Fiction show, but a gory, brutal political thriller that delves into the dark underbelly of 1899 Paris. A second series was confirmed soon after the broadcast of the first and released as Paris Police 1905 in 2023.
After his mishandling of a domestic violence case leads to catastrophic and tragic results, the idealistic and youthful Inspector Antoine Jouin seeks to redeem himself by discovering the killer of a young woman whose dismembered corpse was discovered in a suitcase floating in the Seine. Meanwhile, Prefect of Police Louis Lépine tries to keep a lid on a city where the imminent retrial of Alfred Dreyfus
, a Jewish army officer controversially convicted of selling military secrets to the Germans, is inflaming political extremism and violent antisemitism.
In the second series entitled Paris Police 1905, Jouin's conscience is awakened once more when the baby son of a sex worker dies alone due to the indifference of the vice squad officers who arrested her. He also has to investigate the case of a man found shot dead in the Bois de Boulogne, in a notorious gay mens' cruising area.
Paris Police 1900 provides examples of:
- Addled Addict: Mme. Lépine, for the first part of the story, is an ennui-ridden opiate addict, until she hits rock bottom and cleans up.
- And I Must Scream: Puybaraud ends up paralysed, unable to speak, and unable to reveal to anyone that it was Mme. Lepine who shot him.
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: Even the more honest cops in Paris see detective work as consisting mostly of finding the most likely suspect and torturing a confession out of them. And then there's the Secret Police...
- Bald of Evil: The Comte de Sabran has a shaven head.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Marguerite tells Lépine that she isn't blackmailing him over the photo of his wife, but doing him a service, especially as Puybaraud offered her a million francs for it, and all she's asking him for is to make sure that Fierzi, who saved her life from the Comte de Sabran, doesn't face any criminal charges over the whole affair.
- Blood from Every Orifice: Happens in the second season when Dr. Verlot poisons himself.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The anarchists literally throw bombs... while fighting side by side with the police.
- Bookends: The first season begins and ends with a somewhat disturbing sex scene. The beginning has President Felix Faure dying of a heart attack while receiving oral sex from Marguerite Steinheil. The end has the Lépines about to have what is implied to be their most enthusiastic sex for years, if ever, when M. Lépine is implied to be turned on by a photo of his wife taken without her consent when she was drugged, and also by the fact that she tried to kill Puybaraud and got away with it.
- Break the Haughty: Happens to Mme. Lépine, when as part of a plot against her husband, she is drugged, has pornographic photos taken of her, and then gets dumped in the street and arrested by the police, who mistake her for a prostitute. This causes her to give up drugs and become a much more assertive character.
- Cane Fu:
- Jules Guérin uses his cane to savagely beat a Jewish newsboy in his Establishing Character Moment, and M. Lépine uses his cane as a weapon when leading the police at the rue de Chabrol.
- At the end of the second season, M. Lépine savagely beats Fondari with his cane in his office.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: The extremely violent methods used by the police to extract confessions from people are graphically depicted.
- Concealment Equals Cover: Averted early on, when Chagnolle shoots Jouin (slightly) and his partner (fatally) through the front door of his flat when they come to arrest him.
- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Subverted in the second series, where the pathologist genuinely convinces everyone that a guy who was shot four times in the head really did kill himself. He just bungled it very badly, with the first three shots being non-fatal.
- Crapsack World: 1899 Paris, a violent and grubby Wretched Hive where corruption and bigotry run rampant and any approximation of justice has to be achieved outside the law and with great moral compromise.
- Dating Catwoman: M. Lépine for his wife, by the end of the show.
- Dress Hits Floor: A gender-inverted example, as M. Lépine, before getting into bed with his wife, lets his trousers fall down and then steps out of them. We get to see his sexy sock suspenders. Must be a French thing.
- Enemy Mine: M. Lépine accepts the anarchist leader's offer of an alliance for one night only, against the antisemites during the rue de Chabrol riot.
- Enraged by Idiocy: Fierzi's reaction in the second series when he's left alone, after being called by Marguerite to deal with Adolphe's violent nervous breakdown.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Marguerite is willing to drug Mme. Lépine and allow Fierzi to take pornographic photos of her, in order to blackmail her husband, but breaks things off angrily when she discovers that Fierzi has brought a man in to rape her while she's unconscious as well.
- Faux Affably Evil: Comissaire Puybaraud, who maintains an avuncular manner even while committing the most depraved acts of blackmail and psychological abuse.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The Comte de Sabran has those stereotypically villainous little round glasses.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Puybaraud has his thugs beat a confession out of Jouin for murdering Chagnolle, which he did, except that they claim that he did it premeditatedly because of his affair with Mme. Chagnolle, when actually he executed Chagnolle in rage over the murders he'd committed.
- Friendless Background: In the second season, Jouin asks Fierzi to be his daughter's godfather. Fierzi is bemused as to why Jouin would give the role of a moral authority to a disgraced cop now working as personal thug for a courtesan, before noting that Jouin doesn't have any other actual friends.
- Frontline General: Lépine is quite old but vigorous, and personally leads the police in their battle against the antisemites in rue de Chabrol.
- Gayngst: In the second season:
- Absolutely nobody has any sympathy for Adolphe after he got syphilis from a man, even before he starts acting very unpleasantly.
- It is strongly implied that Cochefert is a closeted gay man who lives under the weight of massive social homophobia.
- Going Cold Turkey: Mme Lépine goes through a non-sensationalised but unpleasant withdrawal after giving up opiates.
- Gorn: The first two episodes, in particular, are full of graphic scenes of animal slaughter and butchery, mostly involving M. Lépine hunting rabbits for the table, and Jules Guérin's habit of cutting the throats of piglets during political meetings to demonstrate what he wants to do to Jews.
- Hate Sink: The Comte de Sabran, a cold, corrupt and vicious man who shows little warmth for anybody at any stage of the show.
- Heel Realisation: Fierzi has a two-stage one, first when Marguerite calls him out for planning to have Mme. Lépine raped, and second when he is forced to torture a confession out of a man who he knows is innocent, for the murder of a woman who he felt responsible for and who he wants to genuinely avenge.
- High-Class Call Girl: Marguerite Steinheil. The hazards and precariaty of the profession are heavily-stressed.
- Historical Domain Character: In particular, M. Lépine, Marguerite Steinheil, Jeanne Chauvin, and Jules Guérin were real, although most of the story is fictionalised.
- Impersonating an Officer: The assassin arrives at the convent wearing a police uniform.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
- Notably used by Mme. Lépine to force the Comtesse de Vaudois into identifying who was responsible for the plot against her.
- In the second season, used by Fierzi and Jouin to interrogate Inspector Guichard.
- Killed Offscreen: Mme. Lépine dies between the first and second seasons (historically, she died in 1903).
- Lost in Translation: Marguerite's derogatory nickname, "Pompes Funebres", is translated in the English subtitles as "Deadly Lips". The actual French meaning is an untranslatable pun between "pompes funebres", the French word for an undertakers/morticians, and "pompe", which literally means "pump" but is also a slang expression for fellatio.
- Matricide: Louis Guérin murders his mother after realising that her and his brother's fanaticism has ruined his life, and that she'll always view him negatively compared to his brother.
- My Greatest Failure: Jouin's affair with a Domestic Abuse victim in the first episode leads to her being murdered by her husband, and then when Jouin and a colleague try to arrest the husband he kills the colleague and is executed in rage by Jouin.
- New Season, New Name: The second season is Paris Police 1905.
- No Animals Were Harmed: The BBC broadcast featured a very large English-language display of this in the otherwise-untranslated credits, probably because of the extremely graphic scenes of animal slaughter and butchery in, especially, the first two episodes.
- Offscreen Breakup: The first season depicted a developing romance between Jouin and Jeanne Chauvin. At the beginning of the second season he's married to another woman and has a baby daughter.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Nobody will ever forget that Marguerite Steinheil killed the president of France with oral sex.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: The Guérins and their supporters are fanatical antisemites, who frequently engage in savage violence against random Jewish people and constantly spew vile antisemitic insults in their speeches and conversation.
- Pragmatic Villain: Louis Guérin seems to see the family antisemitic activism largely as a means of making money, in contrast to his fanatical mother and brother, and at one point bluntly describes himself as a "crook".
- Princess in Rags: The Comtesse de Vaudois is reduced to living in a grotty flat, only having one smart dress, and doing dirty work for Puybaraud.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lépine delivers a brutal one to Fierzi before sacking him from the police.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Cochefert, the only police officer other than Jouin who seems to be interested in genuinely discovering the perpetrators of crimes instead of getting an arrest conveniently.
- Scooby Stack: In the second series, Fierzi's children of various sizes do this to peek when Mme. Fierzi is stitching up Jouin's stab wound.
- Secret Police: Comissaire Puybaraud and Inspector Fierzi of the "Bureau of Information", tasked with solving problems for the government by any means necessary.
- "Shut Up" Kiss: In the second season, Fierzi attempts this on his wife when she's upset about his continued relationship with Marguerite, partly due to sexual jealousy and partly because of the dubiously legal nature of his activities. Her reaction makes clear that she enjoyed the kiss but isn't going to let him off because of it.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: Late in the second season, after Jouin has been falsely accused of sodomy and been stripped of his new respectability, he decides to become Unfettered and fully embrace his Cowboy Cop side again, symbolised by removing the homburg that he's worn for most of the season and putting on his first-season flat cap again.
- Surprise Incest: The truth about the death of Joséphine Berger — Gabriel Sabran killed her in a mixture of rage and horror after she told him that she'd seduced him knowing that they were half-siblings, due to his father's adultery.
- Sword Cane: Cochefert uses one to defend himself against the assassin at the convent.
- Tragic AIDS Story: The Third Republic equivalent — when the first season's main social theme was antisemitism, the second's is syphilis, at the time an incurable and slowly lethal sexually-transmitted diseasenote that was the target of huge moral judgement in society.
- Twisted Christmas: The second season opens with a murdered man and a dead baby on Christmas Eve.
- The Uriah Gambit: The Comte de Sabran had M. Berger shot for cowardice to clear the way for him to take Mme. Berger as a mistress.
- Time Skip: The second season takes place five years after the first.
- Title-Only Opening: The series has a distinctive one where, after the pre-title sequence, the title will suddenly be superimposed on the screen as a black stencil with the last image showing through it.
- Vorpal Pillow: Louis Guérin suffocates his mother with a pillow.
