Season One of Three Pines

Watching the series, Three Pines, on Amazon Prime brought instant comparisons with the mental images of the village and characters of the books by Louise Penny.

Seeing Alfred Molina as Armand Gamache, even before he spoke, I thought this man is Gamache. In the movie, Still Life, Nathaniel Parker portrayed Gamache. Parker never felt right as set out in my review of the movie. (A link is below)

While Parker’s English accent is explained by studying at Cambridge it never felt right. Molina equally speaks of being a student at Cambridge but lacks the English accent.

Molina is a solid man in late middle age with a presence about him befitting the Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Quebec.

Guy Beauvoir is the striving young detective of the books.

Agent Yvette Nichol is a somewhat young agent, inexperienced, even bungling. In the books she is malicious. Sarah Booth who portrays Nichol described the new Nichol as awkward and eager” in an interview on the movieweb.com website. 

Unlike the books Isobel Lacoste is indigenous. One of the changes for the T.V. series is the significant presence of indigenous people and a contemporary indigenous subplot. 

There is a shortage of flaws about the four detectives. Only Beauvoir continues to struggle with alcohol.

Among the villagers Clare Coulter as Ruth Zardo is the very image of the eccentric poet spouting obscenities as she carries Rosa, her duck, everywhere. The visual image of the duck sharing her bathtub was unforgettable.

Gabri is a little slimmer and Olivier a touch shorter than my mental images.

Myrna is not as hefty as in the books.

The village houses and shops are what I visualized from the books.

I was startled by the Church. In my mind it was a modest wooden structure. On T.V., it is a large brick church with a soaring spire. While large for the village of the 21st Century many towns and villages have large churches from 100 years ago.

The three majestic pines dominating the centre of the village in the books are more modest in the series.

Through the 8 episodes there is a continuing story of the search for a missing indigenous woman, Blue Two Rivers. It is a departure from the books.

When I wrote my review of the movie 9 years ago I thought it would have been better in a mini-series. Now it is in a mini-series. It works better in this format yet I have some “buts”.    

A murder is solved every two episodes. The first three murders are drawn from the books. I thought the investigations would have been better done over 3 episodes. 

I did not find the Indian Residential School story fitted well. It was tacked on to the murder and missing persons investigations.

The resolution for Two Rivers was very predictable.

The subtleties and complications in village relationships are barely developed. Unlike the books we see little direct contact between the residents of Three Pines. Unless they are interacting with one of the detectives we learn little of their lives.

Molina is riveting as Gamache. He is engaging, thoughtful, humorous and forthright. You want him to be the man investigating the death of a loved one.

Molina moves the series from average to very good. It was too much to ask that it rival the brilliance of the books. At the same time, my wife Sharon, who has listened to several Gamache books and listened to the series with me, thought it was excellent. I expect I am too demanding. Reading the books can be a disadvantage to drama in the T.V. series when you can tell some of the T.V. plots come from the books. 

I am hopeful a second season can be stronger. As of the end of December of 2022 when I am writing this post Amazon has not announced if there will be a second season. Should there be another year I will try harder to let the T.V. series stand on its own and not compare it continuously to the books.

****

Penny, Louise – (2005) - Still Life; (2006) - Dead Cold (Tied for 3^rd Best fiction of 2006); (2007) - The Cruelest Month; (2009) - The Murder Stone (Tied for 4th Best fiction of 2009); (2010) - The Brutal Telling; (2011) - Bury Your Dead (Best Fiction of 2011); (2011) - A Trick of the Light; (2012) - The Beautiful Mystery (Part I) and The Beautiful Mystery (Part II); (2013) - "P" is for Louise Penny - Movie Producer and Review of the Movie of Still Life; (2013) - How the Light Gets In; (2014) - The Long Way Home; (2014) - The Armand Gamache Series after 10 Mysteries - Part I and Part II; (2015) - The Nature of the Beast (Part I) and The Nature of the Beast (Part II); (2016) - A Great Reckoning - The Academy and Comparisons and The Map; (2016) - Louise Penny and Michael Whitehead Holding Hands; (2017) - Glass Houses - Happiness and Unhappiness and Getting the Law Wrong; (2019) - Kingdom of the Blind and Irreconcilable Dispositions; (2019) - A Better Man; (2020) - All the Devils are Here and Relationship Restaurants in Fiction and Real Life and Reading of the Marais Simultaneously; (2021) - The Madness of Crowds and Responding to Evil and Considering "People"; (2021) - Three Pines - The Amazon Prime Series