What saves the show from simply being Sherlock en Francais is the savvy move of casting Omar Sy as its stand-in for Arsene Lupin. It’s fitting then that Lupin takes a lot of cues from BBC’s phenomenally popular Sherlock (2010 – 2017), including the slick visual style, smart propulsive plotting, and a jaunty theme tune that’s pushing borrowing to the edge of theft. As an adult, inspired by Maurice LeBlanc’s pulp stories of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief, he plans to clear his father’s name and expose the corruption at the heart of the Pellegrini family – by fair means or foul.Īrsene Lupin was conceived as the French answer to Arthur Conan-Doyle’s incredibly popular Holmes and Watson stories, to the extent that Sherlock Holmes and – later, after Conan-Doyle objected – Herlock Sholmes appears in many of the stories, the consulting detective acting as rival and foil to the gentleman thief. After his father is framed for the theft of a diamond necklace and found hanged in his prison cell, Assane must grow up alone. Lupin: In the Shadow of Arsene, to give it its full French title, introduces us to Assane Diop, a Senegalese immigrant whose father works as a chauffeur to the wealthy Pellegrini family. British viewers particularly will find much in it that’s familiar from their own home-grown programming. Was it really less than five years ago that the execrable Versailles (2016 – 2018) was filmed in English to give it readier access to international markets? Since then, responsive, dramatically engaged dubbing has become such a successful art that the much lower-budget Lupin has become the first French TV series to hit the top ten on Netflix UK, with similar success all around the world. Thomas Tyrrell reviews Lupin: In the Shadow of Arsene, and considers the age-old rivalry between the consulting detective and the gentleman thief.

Arsene lupin detective