Maigret

[Bert45]

I vaguely remember watching Maigret on BBC back in the 60s, and I've been watching them again on TalkingTV. I have also watched the French version with Bruno Cremer and some episodes with Michael Gambon and the more recent four episodes with Rowan Atkinson. It has struck me as odd that Ewen Solon, as Sgt Lucas, seemed to be in every episode of the Rupert Davies series, but his name has never been mentioned in the Bruno Cremer episodes that I've seen, nor in the Rowan Atkinson episodes. I've never read the books, but does anybody know if Sgt Lucas was in every story that Simenon wrote, or why he is not in the Cremer or Atkinson episodes? I tried to find a Maigret forum, but it seems to have closed in 2019. It was interesting to watch the Rowan Atkinson version of "Maigret's Night at the Crossroads" which was so different from Cremer's "Maigret et la nuit du carrefour". The couple were Danish in the former and German in the latter. The Atkinson story had a crooked policeman who didn't appear in Cremer's version.

[wolf63]

This might help https://www.goodreads.com/characters/1045671-sergeant-lucas

[Bert45]

If your link is right, wolf63, Lucas was not in many of the Maigret stories. So he was written in to the Davies episodes, rather than being written out of the others.

[Fitzer]

I think the GoodReads page is just what people have noted, from what I remember of reading the books Lucas appeared in many if not most of them, him & Janvier being Maigret’s most featured sidekicks. Night at the Crossroads was an early novel so possible he hadn’t yet appeared. I found this quote “ Out of the 56 novels where Lucas is spoken to by Maigret” here https://www.trussel.com/maig/quatree.htm#:~:text=Let%27s%20examine%20first%20the%20case,novels%2C%20he%20uses%20both%20forms. so my memory isn’t failing me :-)

[Bert45]

I suppose the reason the bent copper was left out of the Cremer version of the Crossroads story was that they only had an hour to tell the story, whereas Atkinson had two hours. I have noticed that, in almost all the Maigret stories, there is nobody left to take to court, so Maigret doesn't have to get his evidence together and write statements.