Article originally published as SPOTLESS Review on Seat42F.
Esquire
is the latest cable network to get into the scripted game, premiering
its first original series tonight, SPOTLESS. A Franco-British import,
SPOTLESS aired in France last March, and now comes to American
television exclusively on Esquire. Honestly, my viewing habits being skewed almost entirely to scripted programming, I am not familiar with Esquire’s
slate or how it might fit their audience. But this is a quality show
that would be right at home on BBC America, Sundance, or A&E. If
that’s the direction Esquire is going in, I’ll be paying more attention
to it from now on.
SPOTLESS is a tale of two brothers who
went through a traumatic event in childhood, and now, coming together
for the first time as adults, find they have very different ways of
dealing with things. Jean Bastiere (Marc-Andrew Grondin, C.R.A.Z.Y.) has
a wife and two young girls, owning his own business cleaning crime
scenes and building a respectable life in London. He struggles
financially, ever since the recession, but he has tried to put the past
behind him and move on mostly honestly. By contrast, Martin Bastiere
(Denis Menochet, Inglourious Basterds) has sunk deeper into the mire,
conducting himself as a criminal. Now, their lives have become messily
intertwined.
I find Jean a very interesting
protagonist because he’s not exactly what one would expect. Usually, the
hero is either noble, with a strong moral compass, or is deeply flawed,
highly skilled, but not going at using those skills around other
people. Jean falls in the middle. He presents himself as an upstanding
man, and resists going afoul of the law when mobster Nelson Clay
(Brendan Coyle, Downton Abbey) tries to recruit him. Yet, he seems to
have little problem cheating on his wife with Claire Wiseman (Tanya
Fear, Kick-Ass 2), nor keeping secrets.
Jean also loves Martin. Despite the
years they’ve spent apart and the disaster Martin thrusts upon him,
there is a bond of love and affection that Jean honors. They went
through something together long ago, and it has made their relationship
unshakeable, no matter what. For someone going for the life Jean keeps
as his public front, one might expect Jean to shun Martin. In SPOTLESS,
he does the opposite, which feels strangely authentic, even as viewers
may question why Jean would do so.
It’s this complexity that makes SPOTLESS
intriguing to me. I can’t easily pin down exactly who Jean is (Martin
and Nelson are quite a bit easier to do so), but he seems like a mostly
good man, not just a television character archetype.
I’m not sure where the story is going,
either. SPOTLESS doesn’t confine itself to Jean’s perspective, but
allows individual plots for Martin and Jean’s wife, Julie Greer-Bastiere
(Miranda Raison, MI-5), that have nothing to do with Jean. And the
paths they go down aren’t what one might expect, especially Martin’s
story in the second episode, which feels totally in-character for
Martin, but diverges far enough away from the central core that it feels
like another narrative entirely. Which is another positive, since most
people’s lives aren’t solely focused on one thing for very long.
SPOTLESS is a dark dramedy. Its
hour-long episodes contain adult content, including violence and
censored nudity and cursing (which probably aired in their full version
overseas, but unfortunately we don’t get that on U.S. basic cable).
However, it also is humorous in some of the crazy stuff that happens,
with bold dialogue and over-the-top danger. Now, none of this is
off-the-rails enough to detract from how genuine the program feels, but
it does make the material lighter than it seems at first glance, another
plus.
I recommend checking out SPOTLESS. It airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. on Esquire.
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