This French-Canadian crime series returns for a second season on Walter Presents. Set in Montreal, it’s a character-driven series that revolves around a hotch-potch of five individuals in the Canadian police force.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
Ève Garance (Rachel Graton) is the titular character – a police-sketch artist who has a remarkable ability to help victims revisit their ordeal and gain clarity on what happened and, hopefully, identify the perpetrators. She’s just returning to work after the trauma she suffered at the end of S1 involving her son.
Also returning is Maryse Ferron (Sophie Lorain) who runs the unit. She was attacked in an underground car park at the end of the previous season. She is confined to a wheelchair and suffers from a brittle-bones disorder.
Bernard Dupin (Rémy Girard) is the grizzled old cop who takes no prisoners – he’s known as “Watchdog” by both colleagues and the criminal fraternity – but has plenty of demons of his own.
The fourth of the main characters is young Anthony (Adrien Belugou) – the newbie in the team who saved Bernard’s life at the end of S1. And finally, we have Elektra (Kathleen Fortin) who works on much of the technical data alongside Anthony.
Now that Maryse has been released from hospital, the team reassemble to try to solve who attacked and nearly killed her. Early suspicion falls on an Italian Mafia boss called Santo Luciani, whom Maryse visited prior to her attack. But he appears to have a solid alibi.
However, when Maryse remembers something from her attack – her attacker stole a key to a Post Office box from her glovebox – the team focus their efforts on CCTV footage to identify who might have visited the PO box. When Anthony spots a familiar face on the grainy TV images, an unlikely suspect is brought in for an interview.
In an attempt to help Maryse remember more from the night of her attack, Ève suggests intermittent photic stimulation – a technique that uses flashing lights to help memorize a particularly traumatic event. It works for Maryse, and they managed to assemble a photofit of her attacker.
The Sketch Artist (Portrait – Robot in its native language) is a formulaic show that has elements of similar North American cop shows like the NCIS and CSI franchises, albeit without the sunshine of locations like LA, Miami and Las Vegas. The characters are somewhat cliched and feel like they’ve been assembled to tick various diversity and inclusion boxes. They’re not entirely believable, if I’m honest. Added to that is the absurd plotline that a clearly still suffering Maryse would be allowed to come out of hospital and investigate her own assault with her own team.
But having said all that, it’s quite an enjoyable show. It doesn’t break any new ground, but if you enjoy the aforementioned US crime shows, this French-speaking variation might tickle your fancy.
‘The Sketch Artist’ Season 2 is available as a full boxset now on C4 Streaming.
