The Amazon Prime Video service MHZ Choice, which serves up lots of foreign television that never had the chance to make it stateside, has subtitled this retro Arsene Lupin series into English in 2021, giving avid English-speaking Arsene Lupin fans like myself the ability to enjoy it for the first time. And it is an impeccable series.
Created in 1989, "The Return of Arsene Lupin" (Le Retour d'Arsene Lupin) is a Columbo-style series, featuring one-hour episodes of mystery thriller style television that is unbelievably faithful to the spirit of Maurice LeBlanc's original books and short stories. Arsene Lupin, played by the dashing François Dunoyer, finds himself chasing new treasures each episode, and with these treasures comes increasing intrigue of plots of kidnapping, murder, and global political intrigue that Lupin manages to tidily solve, and foil the bad guys attempting them. There are twists and turns that keep this show featuring a new ensemble case each episode interesting, a tidy package of introduction to new settings, new people, and new intrigue to be tidily solved in an hour. And true to the Gentleman-Thief's style, in this series Lupin never kills, and he is always on the side of the good guys, but manages to reward himself in the end with some loot. Lupin in this series also maintains a sort of James Bond-esque bravado, as he scales walls, knocks out thugs, and seduces a torrid amount of different women, just like in the books. A warning for any viewers, female frontal nudity and romantic escapades are quite frequently shown in this series; but the violence is next to none compared to the average American television show, perhaps a reflection of the French's difference in attitudes towards sex and violence.
Also just like the books, Return sees Lupin don all kinds of disguises and keeps even the viewer guessing as to who he is and if he will be discovered. This is one of the show's key strengths in my mind, as Dunoyer and the costume department are able to put Lupin in such good disguises without any CGI or special effects that it makes you think that an Arsene Lupin type really could exist in the world today.
Fans of the books will see here that the episodes see Lupin dons all his familiar alises, from bon vivant plane-flying playboy Raoul d'Andrezy, to World War I veteran Don Luis Perenna. His old foe Inspector Ganimard also makes frequent appearances as the Lupin expert, but he can never quite corner the thief. Return places Lupin in the pre and during-World War II era, rather than the pre-and during World War I era seen in LeBlanc's novels, and repurposes some of LeBlanc's original Lupin aliases into updated new tales for this setting. I think this is a plus, as I find World War II to be just old enough to be familiar to a 2022 viewer with regard to the political tensions and European landscape at the time, while still being modern enough that Lupin doesn't feel like a creation of a bygone era. Return does an excellent job of modernization of a character who at the time of the show's creation was first published 80 years prior.
Overall, The Return of Arsene Lupin is an excellent television adaptation of Arsene Lupin. If you're not familiar with the character, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in shows like Columbo and Murder She Wrote, or of course the anime Lupin III. My only gripe is that it is a short 11 episodes. Had it been released stateside at the time of release, it could have been a show that easily could have been serialized for years and years. If you crave more, Dunoyer would return for one more similar season 7 years later, in the show The New Adventures of Arsene Lupin, also dubbed by MHZ Choice.
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