The premier season of this British black comedy arrives on DVD this month, with a second season currently in the works.
Jean Bastière is a crime scene cleaner, coming in after the investigation to clean and sterilise the gruesome landscape of mankind gone mad. While his family life is good, Jean’s business is on the brink of disaster when he loses the police contract. The unexpected return of his estranged brother Martin only complicates matters. Martin is far from squeaky clean, arriving with a body in a bar fridge and dragging Jean into the criminal underworld against his will.
The pilot episode introduces Jean (Marc-André Grondin) and Martin (Denis Ménochet) with a backstory that irrevocably connects the two. Twenty minutes into the opening episode, it turns from a potentially heavy drama into something much more light-hearted, where it remains from then on.
The best comedy comes from the darkest places and, with shades of TV’s Breaking Bad, Spotless finds its niche once it lets the humour shine through. Like most serials however, the pilot only sets up what’s to come, with Jean and Martin becoming the clean up men for gangster Nelson Clay (Brendan Coyle) over the course of 10 episodes.
With exquisite comic delivery by Ménochet in particular, Spotless is a masterclass on subtle humour and the absurdity of human nature. The characters are very relatable despite their uniqueness, and we quickly connect with the relationship between the brothers.
Spotless may be a dark, yet light drama with plenty of humour, but it’s also a gruesome, adventurous and exciting serial that is the most likely contender to replace the oft-missed Breaking Bad. Until now, nothing else has even come close to replacing it.
Reviewed by Rod Lewis
Twitter: @StrtegicRetweet
Rating out of 10: 8
Spotless Season 1 will be releasd on DVD from 8 September 2016.
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