Spiral season 6 recap: a powerful finale to another gripping series Spiral enjoys a low-key, cherished kind of acclaim here, across the Channel from its Parisian source. Screened on BBC Four […]

Spiral enjoys a low-key, cherished kind of acclaim here, across the Channel from its Parisian source.

Screened on BBC Four in double-bill chunks over six Saturday nights in January, it’s been too easy to miss one of the most involving, panoramic cop shows since The Wire.

As I wrote as this latest series got under way at the turn of the year, it’s the tight ensemble of central characters that keeps us coming back for more.

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In truth, this season’s case of bent coppers, trafficked Roma girls and a couple of ruthless gangster brothers posing as community leaders wasn’t the most compelling in Spiral history (how many times were episodes filled out with inconsequential surveillance scenes?), but that hardly matters when the audience is so invested in characters we’ve come to like and loathe over the past 12 (yes, 12!) years.

If anything, the finale left more questions unanswered than we might have expected, but the good news for Engrenages fans is that production on its seventh instalment has already begun, so at least we won’t have to wait another three years for our Parisian crime fix again.

Here’s how the Spiral team came to the final fin of season six – including spoilers.

Laure

She may have achieved some professional success with the capture of the ruthless Moldovan, who was revealed as Mercier’s violent killer, but life is never easy for Captain Berthaud. Even with Gilou by her side, she couldn’t face up to life as a mother, and when the time came to collect baby Romy from hospital, she ran away from her new responsibility, quite literally, as she legged it up a dark hill. The earlier chastisement from Tintin over “crossing the line” by covering for Gilou’s gold theft may well have convinced her that she wasn’t fit to take on even more responsibility in her life.

Gilou

Poor Gilou. In an image that is sure to become meme-worthy, he wasn’t left holding the baby so much as a giant cuddly panda (see above). After smooching his way through season six as his steamy fling with Laure got serious, he seemed ready to put his own troubled younger days behind him and embrace a happy family life. He even seems to have evaded responsibility for his theft of the gold ingot after striking a dodgy deal with Drissa Camara. It remains to be seen whether he’ll find domestic bliss with Laure and Romy, or return to his errant, bachelor boy days.

(Special mention for his deranged attack on Jolers in the police station – it’s been a while since we’ve seen Gilou’s red mist descend.)

Tintin

Tintin has cut a forlorn figure throughout season six. When he wasn’t toiling through a divorce or struggling to bond with his teenage son, he was sulking over Laure and Gilou’s barely concealed affair. Every time he looked over angrily at their not-s0-subtle flirtations you just wanted to grab him by the lapels and tell him to snap out of it.

In the finale, Tintin finally signs his divorce papers, and decides to quit Laure’s team after he cleverly discovers Gilou’s complicity with Drissa. And while he’s still a rather shambling shadow of his younger self, at least he is the one who retains some integrity to the end. Will he return to Laure’s team eventually? Let’s hope so: Spiral wouldn’t be the same without the Gilou and Tintin comedy sideshow.

Joséphine

Joséphine has had a wretched time of it in season six, especially the final episodes. Now that the weaselly Vern has woken from his coma, he’s (correctly) accused her of being the one in the car that ran him over. For Joséphine to have any chance of winning her upcoming court battle, she’ll need to open up about the date-rape that led to her inflicting such violence on Vern. At least she has now started that process by confiding in her boss-turned-defence-lawyer Edelman.

Roban

It certainly hasn’t been a vintage series for the character of Judge Roban either. His famously sharp investigative faculties have been failing fast, and he’s also morally compromised himself by lying in the case involving Machard and the rent boy.

By the final two episodes he’s being forcibly put out to pasture and his case files handed over to less experienced magistrates, much to his chagrin. But like Joséphine he has at least initiated the fightback, agreeing to the brain operation that might just extend his career. We shall see whether he ever gets back to his prodigious best, and whether that rare ethical lapse will come back to bite him.

More talking points

• It was heartening to see a happy ending for Maria, the Roma girl who had to endure so much hardship at the hands of Moldovan. After slashing her wrists while being guarded by Lena she ends up in hospital, but is now safe from her keepers, with Laure assuring her that Justine’s baby is alive and well.

• Jolers, it transpires, did not kill Mercier, even if he did ask Moldovan to stop him from grassing them up. So we can view him more as a corrupt cop who got a taste of the criminal underworld, rather than a butchering monster. His dramatic suicide turned out to be the finale’s only moment of bloodshed.

• Laure’s new boss Beckriche, the neck-scratching upstart with zero street smarts, was painted as an arrogant tyrant from episode one. So naturally he became more sympathetic as the series wore on. But it was the old boss, Herville, who always came across as the more fully formed character. He’s had a touchy relationship with Clery’s female mayor Fabienne Magin all this series, so it was an amusingly unexpected moment when she hands him her phone number.