• April 13, 2013

Jules Maigret is a commissaire of the Paris "Brigade Criminelle"), the brilliant creation of Georges Simenon. So popular was the reserved police detective, that 75 novels and 28 short stories were penned about him between 1931 and 1972. He also sleuthed his way in to film and TV. Smoking a pipe, a nod to Sherlock Holmes, is one of his trademarks. While his meticulous English counterpart favored cocaine, Maigret prefers alcohol, usually beer or white white. Maigret has been adapted by both British and Japanese TV, but to savor him in the original, MHz Networks has just released two six-DVD sets of the celebrated French version, set against the backdrop of 1950s Paris and starring Bruno Cremer, who played him in 54 episodes, from 1991–2005. For Americans who want the true flavor of the singular Maigret, the DVDs are in French with English subtitles.