Mdlle Scarlet en France
Mar. 14th, 2026 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessMiss Scarlet and the Duke - 3.3 Hotel St Marc
I really enjoyed this episode, in part because of the change of location. It was almost a bottle episode, set in the titular hotel, somewhere in the north of France in the winter. We watched a stranger to us sign in as a guest, go to his room, and get himself handcuffed to the bed by a triumphant Eliza. She thought he was a wanted conman, even though he protested his innocence. Until she went downstairs and bumped into Nash, who was confident he’d also got this Charles Parnell ??, and had tied up another chap in another guest room.
Eliza was smart enough to realise that either one of them was wrong, or both of them were. Although Nash, who she eventually ended up working with (never FOR as he wants), was quite good, she was probably the better detective, as they tried to work out who was lying, the viewers tried to guess, and more characters got involved, from the understandably exasperated hotel clerk, a French police officer who dropped dead, an Indian businessman to the lady in a scarlet dress who started flirting with Nash once she and the businessman stopped clicking. Meanwhile, the snow fell outside…
I kept an open mind. The man Eliza had first nabbed protested his innocence convincingly, but he could have been a good actor, and at the same time, I thought it could have been someone entirely different. But then, I kept expecting William to turn up. (He never did. He was only referenced by Eliza trying to sum up what was happening in a telegraph to him, and failing.)
So, I had suspected the hotel clerk, mainly because he was always around, but I hadn’t suspected the lady in the red dress – partly because there’d been so much confusion as to how the dead man had expired, because of the questionable veracity of the two witnesses (who had been tied up, and so probably hadn’t done it.) So, I loved that she turned out to be something other than she appeared (a hitwoman no less, and of course ladies prefer poison than brute force!)
I enjoyed the switch in personalities from the supposed lawyer and the supposed clerk, who turned out to be a gang of men pretending to be this international conman, with the first being the lowest class one. That was satisfying. I’m not sure if it was a mix of performance or writing, but though they lampshaded the accent being off, the man who Nash had arrested turning out to be an American detective, pretending to be a wealthy Englishman didn’t quite work for me. (I was too aware of him being played by a British actor, I supposed.)
We and Eliza learned more about Nash. As she noted, his limp after the gunshot came and went, and it really was a question of whether she could trust him, typified by his story about his now dead brother. She didn’t believe it at first, but then was forced to. Although she absolutely had the bragging rights because we saw him get fooled into losing his gun by a suspect. She got fooled into opening a door offscreen. I will note that the actor playing Nash is very soft spoken.
After getting tied up and tricked, turning from rivals into colleagues – so much so that Eliza slipped and called Nash by his first name, which he’d been wanting all episode, the two detectives finally solved the case, and with the French police really and truly handling the case, went off for breakfast together.
I really enjoyed this episode, in part because of the change of location. It was almost a bottle episode, set in the titular hotel, somewhere in the north of France in the winter. We watched a stranger to us sign in as a guest, go to his room, and get himself handcuffed to the bed by a triumphant Eliza. She thought he was a wanted conman, even though he protested his innocence. Until she went downstairs and bumped into Nash, who was confident he’d also got this Charles Parnell ??, and had tied up another chap in another guest room.
Eliza was smart enough to realise that either one of them was wrong, or both of them were. Although Nash, who she eventually ended up working with (never FOR as he wants), was quite good, she was probably the better detective, as they tried to work out who was lying, the viewers tried to guess, and more characters got involved, from the understandably exasperated hotel clerk, a French police officer who dropped dead, an Indian businessman to the lady in a scarlet dress who started flirting with Nash once she and the businessman stopped clicking. Meanwhile, the snow fell outside…
I kept an open mind. The man Eliza had first nabbed protested his innocence convincingly, but he could have been a good actor, and at the same time, I thought it could have been someone entirely different. But then, I kept expecting William to turn up. (He never did. He was only referenced by Eliza trying to sum up what was happening in a telegraph to him, and failing.)
So, I had suspected the hotel clerk, mainly because he was always around, but I hadn’t suspected the lady in the red dress – partly because there’d been so much confusion as to how the dead man had expired, because of the questionable veracity of the two witnesses (who had been tied up, and so probably hadn’t done it.) So, I loved that she turned out to be something other than she appeared (a hitwoman no less, and of course ladies prefer poison than brute force!)
I enjoyed the switch in personalities from the supposed lawyer and the supposed clerk, who turned out to be a gang of men pretending to be this international conman, with the first being the lowest class one. That was satisfying. I’m not sure if it was a mix of performance or writing, but though they lampshaded the accent being off, the man who Nash had arrested turning out to be an American detective, pretending to be a wealthy Englishman didn’t quite work for me. (I was too aware of him being played by a British actor, I supposed.)
We and Eliza learned more about Nash. As she noted, his limp after the gunshot came and went, and it really was a question of whether she could trust him, typified by his story about his now dead brother. She didn’t believe it at first, but then was forced to. Although she absolutely had the bragging rights because we saw him get fooled into losing his gun by a suspect. She got fooled into opening a door offscreen. I will note that the actor playing Nash is very soft spoken.
After getting tied up and tricked, turning from rivals into colleagues – so much so that Eliza slipped and called Nash by his first name, which he’d been wanting all episode, the two detectives finally solved the case, and with the French police really and truly handling the case, went off for breakfast together.
