PicoBlog

It looks like The Order of the Solar Temple is back - like a ritual attack - in the new French crime mystery series Anthracite, which stars Camille Lou, Noémie Schmidt and rapper Hatik in the leading roles.

Let’s start off with some history: there was a time, some thirty years ago, that quasi-religious cults and sects were all the rage, a lot of them concerned about the end times.

You had Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple in Guyana and David Koresh and The Davidians in Waco, Texas. And in France you had The Order of the Solar Temple, led by Luc Jouret and Joseph DiMambro.

These are all stories that did not end well, often leading to a combination of mass murder/suicide, leaving hundreds of people dead. Gullible folks, who were told by cult leaders that their death was just a step into the next phase/the afterlife/heaven.

The Order of The Solar Temple was founded in 1984 in Geneva, Switzerland, and Belgian doctor Jouret and convicted French conman DiMambro claimed the origins of the organization went all the way back to the medieval Knights Templar.

It all came to a horrible end in 1994 when 53 members of the OTS in Canada and Switzerland were murdered or killed themselves, while the buildings they lived in were set on fire. More deaths followed til the OTS ceased to exist in 1997. Or did it?

This is background information for the new six part series Anthracite, le mystere de la secte des Ecrins, which is not a documentary but pure fiction, created by Fanny Robert and Maxime Berthemy, who both wrote popular French series Profilage.

Per the official synopsis, Anthracite is set in a small village in the Alps, that was shaken to its core in 1994, when the collective suicide of a sect called Les Ecrins hit the headlines. 

Thirty years on, a young woman is found murdered, in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the way the sect operated. The ideal scapegoat is Jaro Gatsi (Hatik), a young delinquent who came to the mountains to get his life back, but now quickly finds himself accused of the grisly murder. 

Determined to prove his innocence, he receives unexpected help from Ida (Schmidt), an eccentric and somewhat hyperactive web-sleuth, whose father Solal (Jean-Marc Barr) has gone missing and who has come to the village looking for clues. 

Pretty soon Ida and Jaro are investigating the case before coming to the conclusion that their involvement has nothing to do with chance, and that the answers they seek are firmly rooted in the secrets of their own past.

In the first couple of episodes it is revealed that Ida’s father is a journalist who had launched his own investigation into the history of the cult. Jaro, on the other hand, finds out that his mother was part of the cult and that he is seen by some as the son of the chosen one.

The third lead is policewoman Giovanna (Camille Lou), who discovers that the murdered woman is found with anthracite strategically placed upon her eyelids, a direct copy of the murder of Roxane Vial, which started the whole affair thirty years ago. It’s a trail that leads to the region’s mines, which seem to hide some dirty secrets.

Give a gift subscription

Like in that other recent French series, Furies, the plot moves around pretty quickly, while the wintry surroundings of the Swiss Alps make for a great visual backdrop, and the game cast makes the most of the many twists and turns that the series has to offer. 

Anthracite is the kind of gourmet burger that Netflix does quite well. It’s not as sophisticated as The Diplomat or The Lincoln Lawyer, but if you liked recent series like Harlan Coben’s Fool Me Once or the Polish surprise hit Detective Forst, you’re probably going to enjoy this too.

ncG1vNJzZminlaOyrHrSrpmsrJGYuG%2BvzqZmqWeRo8GpvsCcoK2dXaOytbLLoq9mq5Wntqa%2FjGtna2w%3D