PARIS EAST

Recording Maigret Day on ITV3 was very successful and I have watched a couple of the episodes. Budapest, the Danube and Lake Balaton have stood in for Paris, the Seine and LaRochelle, and the acting of Michael Gambon and company has been superb. Simenon's creations Maigret, Lucas, Janvier, and La Pointe are the blue print for later detective teams, and the series captures the atmosphere of the novels.

A friend touring Eastern Europe sent me this note in an email:

"Odessa is incredible! The downtown area is so much like Paris with the older architecture and tree-lined streets. I think I walked the entire city."

So perhaps a new Maigret series might go even further east.