TV REVIEW : Inspector Maigret’s Back On the Case

“Mystery!” continues to be the most reliable venue for drama on PBS, resuming at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15 with the first of six cases starring the prolific French novelist Georges Simenon’s famed Chief Inspector Maigret.

“Maigret” is mighty, not because Simenon’s plots are especially intricate--they’re not--but because his pipe-smoking Parisian hero is so likable. He’s unspectacular but sure, a kind heart with as much empathy for some of the criminals he catches as for their victims.

England’s Granada Television chose wisely in making Michael Gambon (“The Singing Detective”) its Maigret. His deceptively benign smile and hulking, square-jawed somberness convey the sort of weariness you’d expect from someone who’d made a career of exploring the dark side of human behavior.

Filmed in Budapest to better approximate Simenon’s post-World War II Paris settings, “Maigret” tonight finds the chief inspector being pressured by his superiors to solve the knifing murders of young women in Montmartre. His elaborate stakeout nets someone, but is it the right someone?

Typically Simenon (and based on his first novel), the premiere is an interior story, substituting the physical action one usually finds in mysteries with action of the mind, as the somewhat sedentary Maigret gets to the bottom of things largely through brainpower and pugnacious questioning. In fact, if there is a predictability to this batch of Simenon, it’s that too many of Maigret’s targets reach the end of the line in his office, breaking down and confessing under his gentle but relentless interrogation.

The best of “Maigret” comes in week three, when the chief inspector returns to his hometown to investigate a case where the murder weapon is a newspaper clipping. It’s the most ingeniously plotted of the lot and also the most intriguing, with Maigret confronting not only a killer but also his own past.

“I wish I could remember you,” sniffs the pampered young count whose mother employed Maigret’s father for years as an estate keeper. On the contrary, “Maigret” is memorable.