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Brutal … Joséphine Karlsson
Brutal … Joséphine Karlsson Photograph: BBC/Son et Lumière/Canal+/Caroline Dubois
Brutal … Joséphine Karlsson Photograph: BBC/Son et Lumière/Canal+/Caroline Dubois

Spiral recap: season six, episodes seven and eight – Joséphine's revenge

This article is more than 6 years old

Gilou and the CDI are reeling from the calamitous camp raid, Joséphine exacts her spectacular revenge and the Camaras could have a rat problem

  • Spoiler alert: this recap contains spoilers for episodes seven and eight of Spiral, season six. Don’t read unless you are up to date

There’s no letup in the drama this week with Roban’s cancer diagnosis, Bakary’s death and Joséphine’s spectacular revenge. Exactly who killed Mercier and why it was so brutal remains a mystery, however.

The Mercier case

After last week’s calamitous camp raid, CID have to redouble their efforts. Gilou does excellent extracurricular work keeping tabs on Jolers – and what a charmer he’s turning out to be. A life of pimping, robbery and domestic abuse keeps him busy, and his side hustle of tipping off the Camaras to lucrative burglary targets leads us to the climactic final scene of the week.

The Camaras attempt an audacious tunnelled safe heist, but Jolers sells them out, phoning in an anonymous tipoff to the police. The patrol cop answering the call kills Bakary as they make their escape. He told Drissa he had a bad feeling about the operation, but his big brother talked him round. Now that he’s dead who knows what Drissa is capable of?

It seems likely that Maria holds the answer to why Mercier was killed. We see that she is being held along with other girls at the house on Rue Emile Zola by the Albanian pimp Virgil Moldovan, though she manages to escape to parts unknown. CID at least have Moldovan in their sights now so with a bit of luck they’ll locate Maria before her body shows up on a rubbish dump in the 19th arrondissement.

Gilou and the team are back on track Photograph: BBC/Son et Lumière/Canal+/Caroline Dubois

Joséphine

I really thought Joséphine would have something diabolically sophisticated to take down Vern Jr – perhaps involving GHB, a sex worker and a film crew. In the end, she just pancakes him in the car park with his own motor then manually crushes his testicles in intensive care. It’s reckless and brutal, but it’s all the catharsis she needs.

The partners take the opportunity of Vern’s incapacitation to let Joséphine go and she winds up with Edelson. The Bodin case immediately catches her eye – why wouldn’t it? There’s sex, death and, in Roban and Machard, two pillars of the judicial establishment she so despises. We all know that Ms Karlsson is the last person you want on your case when you have something to hide.

Here’s my problem with that, though – I’ve never believed that Joséphine is motivated by injustice. She just loves a good dustup and thumbing her nose at elites. Mrs Bodin doesn’t need to know any of the grim details of her son’s case, but Joséphine can’t let it go because pit bulls never can.

Roban

The news we knew was coming is finally delivered. Roban has a stage III anaplastic astrocytoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Showcasing his trademark stoicism, he asks the doctor how it would be if he just ploughed on without treatment. How very like him. He will die doing what he loves.

As if he didn’t have enough on his plate, he has to deal with a resurgent Joséphine snapping at his heels over the Bodin case. She uncovers the fact that Machard bought an expensive watch for Nicolas – exactly the kind of reckless act that a lifetime of Masonic cronyism engenders. I don’t think he’s going to get away with this one, though.

Eric Edelman and Joséphine Karlsson Photograph: BBC/Son et Lumière/Canal+/Caroline Dubois

Thoughts and observations

  • It feels churlish to point out that we never got 100% confirmation that Vern was the rapist. It would be quite a Spiralesque twist if it turned out to be, say, Edelman all along.
  • Gilbert De Niro and Alain Melon are some memorable French aliases for the bad guys’ burners. More on Sarkozy and his Paul Bismuth phone here.
  • It’s a powerful performance from Thierry Godard as Gilou explains his cold feet over entering Romy’s life. I hope these two work it out. They were pretty adorable buying wrap-over bodysuits together.
  • “You don’t let up, you take risks, you take a hard line – you’re completely autistic, but you get what you want.” Edelman mastering the art of the backhanded compliment in his elevator pitch to Joséphine.
  • I loved Herville’s subtext-laden “I assure you, when the time comes I won’t forget” to his crew. I don’t even know if they picked up on it, but they are going to regret that Photoshopped image of him as CID’s poodle.
  • If you’re worried about Roban, you should be. The prognosis for a stage III anaplastic astrocytoma is not great.
  • I was intrigued to read the comments below the line last week about Beckriche’s nervous neck scratching. Sometimes an actor will use a persistent physical gesture to get across a character point from the bio (“Beckriche is uptight and always under pressure to get results”). He seems to have dropped it this week so maybe that’s to illustrate him travelling along his redemption arc from careerist drone to good police? Your neckgate theories below, please.

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