PicoBlog

Pax Massilia (or: Blood Coast) is a new French crime series about a group of police officers who try to track down a dangerous criminal who is busy plunging Marseille into a bloodbath.

This six-part drama was created by Kamel Guemra, who was one of the writers of the Netflix-hit Balle Perdue (Lost Bullet).

The main director is Olivier Marchal, in fact Pax Massilia is being advertised as ‘the new series by Marchal,’ since the veteran filmmaker (and former police officer!) has been active for 35 years, first as an actor before branching out into writing and directing. 

His best known movie is probably the crime drama 36 Quai des Orfèvres (2004), which starred Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu and was nominated for a bunch of Cesars. Through the years Marchal also directed series like Braquo and Section Zéro.

Blood Coast stars Jeanne Goursaud (from Barbarians), Nicolas Duvauchelle, Tewfik, Jallab, Florence Thomassin, Olivier Barthélémy, and others, in the main roles.

Pax Massilia (literal translation: Peace in Marseille) desperately wants to be an intense crime drama, and yes, it does feature a number of explosive action scenes. 

The story uses the well-worn trope of a rookie, Alice Vidal (Goursaud), who operates in an independent way and wants to avenge her father’s death by taking out infamous crime lord Franck Murillo (Duvauchelle). 

Murillo himself is mourning the death of his young son. He and his companion, a mysterious person called the Indian (Moussa Maaskri) want to make the Saidi crime family, led by Ali (Samir Boitard) pay for that, first by taking his drug empire away from him, and then by killing him.

Meanwhile, Alice’s behavior is frowned upon by her more experienced colleagues, led by Benamar (Jallab), even though they themselves don’t always operate by the book. 

His narcotics squad is being investigated by Miranda (Diouc Koma) from Internal Affairs, who also has some history with Alice. 

For her part, police chief Fabiani (Thomassin) just wants to prevent an all-out gang war in the city.

So there is a lot going on, even though it is clear that we’ve seen a lot of this before, in other shows, in places from all over the world.

Still, the first couple of episodes went by pretty quickly, which means it’s well made (acted, shot, edited, etc), and if you like this kinda stuff, there’s probably something here for you. 

Much is made, by the way, of the reputation of Marseille as being a crazy city, with an undercurrent of corruption running right through it.

This theme was already explored in the earlier Netflix-series Marseille (2016-2018), which ran for two seasons and starred Gerard Depardieu. 

I’m sure that Marseille has plenty of crime and corruption to offer, but maybe, just maybe, next time Netflix can pick another French city…

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