REVIEW: Astrid: Murder In Paris (S3 E5/8)

In Témoin – Witness – Astrid encounters someone from her own country – ‘Autistan’ – and has to break down communication barriers to solve a case which cuts to the very nature of her own neurodiversity.

A young autistic boy, Jules, is separated from his mother at a train station, and when she finds him, his bag has been lost – but more vitally, when they meet her husband, he is shot dead and she disappears. The boy is of course a witness, but cannot communicate – he’s capable only of reciting train timetables. His brother is not much help, devoted to his sibling but unable to deal with his condition. Cue Astrid, and William from her support group, who explains why autistic people are interested in trains.

Though demonstrating a useful ability, analysing movement patters from 81 CCTV images simultaneously, Astrid is having her own problems – her police academy tutor Mme Langlais seems determined to bully her out of her class. Astrid is tempted to chuck it all in, as she knows her stuff, but couldn’t cope with the oral exam. She attempts to reduce her stress with a jigsaw of a painting by Wassily Kandinsky. Raph, of course, offers to do Mme Langlais over.

There’s clearly something going on at Jules’ home – his cat has been poisoned and his neighbour seems overly attentive. Moreover, Jules’ brother is involved in a cannabis smuggling plot.

Astrid finally realises that the key to the mystery is in fact held by Jules – part of the timetable he recites is for a bus stop near a centre offering support to the families of autistic children. Raph discovers that another boy being supported there died and that this child’s mother is masquerading as Jules’s neighbour – she has a crazed obsession with Jules and has taken his mother after shooting his father. She then also takes Jules’ brother.

Raph comes to the rescue of the kidnapped family, and Nico puts a bullet in the crazy lady’s shoulder. She says she didn’t mean to hurt anyone – in fact, Jules’ father brought a gun to the station with the intention of killing her – but she did poison the cat, so we don’t have any sympathy for her.

Mme Langlais apologises to Astrid, explaining that she actually wanted to help her get through the exam, but had gone the wrong way about it – but Astrid recognises from her perfume that this was the woman Astrid’s father was having an affair with before his death. The question is, could Mme Langlais become a substitute mother to Astrid – or did she have more involvement in her father’s death than she is letting on?

While this episode gives some more insight into Astrid’s condition – which as she points out, cannot be ‘cured’ as it is not a disease – in many other ways it doesn’t hang together. Why didn’t the mad neighbour just take Jules from the station instead of his mother? How did she manhandle Jules’ drugged brother out of his apartment? And how did Jules make his own way to the station when he ran away?

The episode title could of course refer to the 1985 Harrison Ford movie Witness, in which a young Amish boy sees a murder. Fortunately, Astrid doesn’t end up having to live with the Amish. She’d probably be able to tell them how to build a barn, but their habits and manners would strike her as more than a little odd.

Chris Jenkins

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

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