France, power and women - how one has to imagine it, makes “Paris Police 1900”, a sinister eight-part crime thriller production by the pay channel Canal Plus, clear from the very first shot.

It is February 16, 1899. The French President Félix Faure (Olivier Pajot) gossips on a sofa about the tense situation in the country. A woman kneels in front of him, so that the head of state's personal tension is released.

Then Faure parted at the moment of the highest excitement, which has brought him the ridicule of his compatriots to this day.

More important than the circumstances of this death, however, is Faure's role in the so-called "Dreyfus Affair", which has shaken France since the conviction of the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus for alleged betrayal of secrets in 1894 - a scandal with an anti-Semitic core that Roman Polanski brought to the cinema in 2019 Has.

Félix Faure spoke out against the reopening of the proceedings; he was also the addressee to whom the open letter from the writer Émile Zola in the left-wing newspaper “L'Aurore” was addressed in 1898: “J'accuse ...!”.

The excitement at which Faure died in the opening scene “Paris Police 1900” is therefore also a political one: the President is outraged that Dreyfus will now be brought from Devil's Island to Paris for an appeal.

He fears unrest up to and including revolution.

The troublemakers by no means only include the anarchists, who are being watched by the police: a newspaper boy who sells “L'Aurore” is beaten up in broad daylight, and his father's kiosk is set on fire as a warning to Dreyfus sympathizers. A piglet named Dreyfus can be seen in a theater - to be stabbed in front of a cheering audience at an event by the anti-Semitic agitator Jules Guérin (demonic: Hubert Delattre). Series creator Fabien Nury was once known for comics like "Once Upon a Time in France" and "The Death of Stalin". His aesthetic view is reflected in “1900 Police Paris” in a decidedly rustic imagery.

This also applies to the beginning of the criminal case, with which the capital city police officers like the quiet inspector Antoine Jouin (Jérémie Laheurte), who is a little too pale despite the facial injury, dealt in this climate: in a suitcase, the director Julien Despaux ("Profiling Paris") piece unpacking in front of the camera, the naked torso of a woman lies.

Possibly it is the wife of a ministerial official who is a loyal reader of Guérin's scratch sheet “L'Antijuif”.

We don't want to anticipate the plot any further.

“Paris Police 1900” is recommended with a backdrop that looks like a painting that has come to life, and a narrative that is very dense and hard and successfully dispels any enthusiastic memory of the Belle Époque.

In addition to the inexperienced inspector Jouin, the central staff includes the old man's superintendent Puybaraud (Patrick d'Assumçao), his concentrated colleague Cochefert (Alexandre Trocki), the violent investigator Fiersi (Thibaut Evrard) and the passionate hunter Louis Lépine (stiff and robust: Marc Barbé), who is being ordered back to the Seine as the new police chief and is supposed to get the smoldering unrest under control with everything that is needed.

Two women fight against the surplus of men: the lawyer Jeanne Chauvin (Eugénie Derouand), who tries to assert herself as a lawyer against the laughter of men, and the legendary Marguerite "Meg" Steinheil (Evelyne Brochu), who is in the best of circles.

It is she who kneels in front of the rattling President Félix Faure on February 16, 1899 - and then tries to monetize the President's explosive papers.

We are dealing with a series that is well worth seeing, which only lacks traction in some places.

As is so often the case: As a concentrated mini-series, “Paris Police 1900”, which has already been described as the French echo of “Babylon Berlin”, would have done better.

Paris Police 1900

, today at 9:20 p.m. on Sky Atlantic.