BBC Acquires French Crime Thriller ‘Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime’

The BBC has acquired French crime thriller Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime, which follows the true story of one of France’s most prolific sexual predators.

The six-part series looks at a string of sexual assaults in northern France in the late 1980s, along the same road by the Sambre river. As the police fail to get to grip with extent of the attacks or make a connection between cases, it is only 30 years later when a culprit is caught.

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind docuseries The Staircase and the drama Laetitia, recounts the legal case of a serial rapist. The cast includes Alix Poisson (The returned, Six Women), Clémence Poesy (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Tenet), Olivier Gourmet (Oussekine, La Promesse), Noémie Lvovsky (Camille Rewinds, Farewell, My Queen), Jonathan Turnbull (Soldiers), Pauline Parigot (Soldiers, HPI).

The show follows the progression of the investigation and its repercussions from the 80s through to 2018 and the beginning of France’s #MeToo era, a movement that has picked up rapid pace in recent months.

Head of BBC programme acquisition Sue Deeks said: “Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime is an absorbing series about France’s most notorious sexual predator, and of how he was allowed to slip through the cracks of the judicial system for over 30 years. Each episode is told from the perspective of a different character involved in the case – a victim, the judge, the mayor, the scientist, the police officer and finally, the perpetrator, and is a gripping examination of the flaws of a society and its institutions.”

The series is produced by What’s Up Films and Federation Studios in co-production with Versus Production, originally commissioned by France Televisions. It will air on BBC iPlayer.