This version of Maigret sets a trap is just not good enough to rate comparison with the famous Delannoy film of 1957, with its starry cast of Gabin, Desailly, Girardot and Bogaert. Rowan Atkinson, a considerable comic actor, is simply not up to playing Maigret: they have given him a pipe and a helpful wife but it's just not Maigret! Only David Dawson as Moncin and Fiona Shaw as his mother have done any effective work, as people who have been pushed to the limits of sanity. The Budapest locations are effective enough, as the Prague ones had been in the Bruno Cremer series. Camera work and music are appropriate, just the acting by most of the cast is not up to standard.

I was very disappointed with this. Atkinson is a brilliant comedy performer but not a serious actor. His performance here was just passable. I wonder how many fine British and dare I say it French actors were passed over to give him this opportunity. I just couldn't take him seriously. However no doubt if Hollywood had made this film it would have starred Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn so musn't really complain. The direction and production values were very good notwithstanding that the film was shot mostly in Budapest as you could tell when occasionally the camera would pan across a wall trying to evoke early post war Paris but instead showing us posters clearly written in Hungarian. What totally ruined the film for me was the decision to use primarily English actors with a variety of English accents. You would see portrayed a French bar and obviously great lengths had been taken to add a genuine air of authenticity so much so that you could almost smell the stale wine and the aroma of Gauloise cigarettes then someone would come in and order a "sous-citron" with an unmistakable mancunian accent.Very effective what Brecht called "Stimmungsbrechung" - mood breaking.Far better, I think, to have used French-speaking actors possibly with subtitles or at least some form of franglais a la Hercule Poirot. In fact, some of it was so ridiculous that it would only have needed Atkinson to roll his eyes or start mugging to camera and I would have fallen off my chair. I am ready to suspend a modicum of belief for the sake of drama but not my my entire intellect.

Maigret detective stories comprise just a small part of the immensely prolific Simenon's oeuvre. However, Georges Simenon is best known exactly because of the Maigret character. I've read Maigret stories since childhood, and early on I was fascinated not so much with the "clever" story lines and plots, but because of somewhat lazy and disorganized ways in which eponymous detective and his associates in general operate. This adaptation catches very good all the important traits of a Maigret novel. Dangerous and focused killer of women is on the loose in the Montmartre quartier, Paris is on the brink because nobody sleeps peacefully until he is captured, Maigret works hard but cannot find a breakthrough. His men know that nobody but him will find a murderer, but higher officials are asking for closure. So Maigret will have to embark on a dangerous cat and mouse game with the killer, in which other innocent lives will be put in danger. So far, for those not familiar with cool detective, nothing exceptional. But, everything is so Simenon, and so Maigret, that you enjoy the slow flow and unraveling of the many seemingly unimportant scenes and subplots in this very well crafted movie. There are poor and struggling families with small children that will loose their mother; there are inner courtyards where housekeepers lurk behind their curtains and labourers drag their tired feet. There are lots of basement wine bars with barrels and men nurturing their glass of wine, beer or cognac. There are lots of young hardworking women, all of them attractive in their cheap after war dresses and blouses. Some of them are telephone operators, some of them strippers and dancers, and there is entire police squad of brave young women ready to risk their lives on the dangerous streets of Paris, no questions asked. And of course, there are suspects, quirky aspiring upper middle class characters in their slick apartments, struggling to appear respectable but hiding terrible secrets. More hardboiled police officers, dungeons of Quay d'Orfevre full of shady alkoholics, drug users and other sinners. Journalists, thirsty of any information but some of them familiar of Maigret's way of operating. And, yes, in the middle is Maigret, the detective with his pipe who is never in hurry. Rowan Atkinson was somewhat surprising choice, but he did excellent work impersonating french detective. Recommendable!

This is a detective drama that puts Rowan Atkinson back on TV on a current role: chief investigator Maigret.I found this to be not trilling, not dramatic and quite predictable. Rowan does not convince me has a detective. Not because any comedy association I could have made with his persona but because the character its not there. I really enjoyed his performance in Keeping mum (2005) witch had nothing of is physical comedy so I watched this with no reservations what so ever. But I found him blank. Has some other characters has well. His "deduction skills" are not there, are not brilliant or admirable, they just pop-up like if written in a convenient script. I don't believe this Maigret stories were the best choice for a TV show, because this one seems very beat and predictable. The action is set on France - Maigred is a french detective - the crimes happen in french locations, the newspapers, the postcards on the streets, everything is in french. Yet, they all speak English. Witch is fine... if they had let this extras and the music be English to! Goof: When the press reporters follow Maigret up the stairs and inside the police department, they all stop by a glass door. Before the police crosses the door it says: "brigade criminale" after it reads "Police judiciaire" - witch by they way, is the expression Maigret uses at least one time to present himself. Again... french expressions in English context. Kind of weird. I know this is a one-hero show but I also disliked the importance the director gave to Atckison's character. Did Rowan really had to be on screen almost every time? Too exaggerated. His wife was also unnecessary in the story, because the director fails to deliver the importance of their accomplice relationship. I found the ending terrible cliché and it re-forced the impression the TV movie/series gave me that it was all about the star behind the role. Far from Poirot(its even an insult to make such a comparison), with a poor direction and many characters portrayed has caricatures but watchable. Positive aspects: Inspector Lognon. Almost without lines in the movie but it was the first character I was not able to dodge my eyes from. Good cinematography and nice but not flawless time reconstitution.