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The Madame Blanc Mysteries
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The Larkins
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Murder on the Antiques Roadshow — it's such an obvious idea. There's all those priceless heirlooms in a country house setting and a cast of eccentric experts for the suspects.
Former Coronation Street star Sally Lindsay has seized that as the concept for her new series, The Madame Blanc Mysteries (C5), and cast herself as the sleuth.
In a perfect world it would be called Miss Fiona Bruce Investigates, but you can't have everything. Anyway, the Roadshow hostess already has her own detective adventures, with Fake Or Fortune?.
Sally, who created and co-writes Madame Blanc, says she got the inspiration after meeting an antiques dealer named Jan, one of the buyers on Dickinson's Real Deal, while holidaying in Majorca.
Sally Lindsay has cast herself as the sleuth in new series, The Madame Blanc Mysteries
When C5 announced the series, it was billed as 'gritty'. Any grit has been sieved out, because this mild and milky crime story could easily be an afternoon offering, with the central character renamed Madame Blancmange. That's fine. We don't watch antiques programmes for their noir nastiness, especially when they're filmed in the sunny South of France.
Sally plays Jean White, whose husband Rory is bumped off during one of his regular buying trips to the French flea markets. She discovers he has left her bankrupt — and when she flies to France to learn more, realises he was leading a double life, with another woman.
We know it's murder, because someone put cyanide gas in Rory's
