"The Bar on the Seine" - Maigret follows a whisper to the Seine’s hidden truth.

Описание: Classic Old Time Radio, Vintage radio shows, the Golden Age of radio, murder, mystery, drama, comedy, sci-fi, westerns.

In "The Bar on the Seine", Maigret receives a cryptic tip from a dying convict that leads him into the world of Paris’s bohemian underbelly. The clue points to a murder that was never solved, and Maigret’s pursuit takes him to a riverside bar frequented by eccentric artists, petty criminals, and elusive figures with tangled pasts. As he navigates this unfamiliar milieu, Maigret must rely less on procedure and more on instinct, slowly unraveling a case that hinges on identity, deception, and the quiet desperation of those living on society’s margins.

The 1992 BBC adaptation, starring Michael Gambon, captures the atmospheric tension of Simenon’s novel with subdued lighting and introspective pacing. Gambon’s Maigret is quietly tenacious, absorbing the rhythms of the Seine and the contradictions of its patrons. The episode explores themes of guilt, reinvention, and the fragility of truth, offering a moody, character-driven mystery that lingers like the fog over the river.

24 - 'The Bar on the Seine' (Tuesday 10th December 2002 @ 2:15 p.m.)

Maigret visits Jean Lenoir in his cell to tell him his reprieve wasn't granted. Lenoir starts to talk about someone who'd dumped a body in the Canal Saint-Martin, and how he and his friend Victor had seen him and blackmailed him. He'd lost track of him, but ran into him once at the inn, the Guinguette à Deux Sous. Some time later, when Maigret is buying a hat, he overhears a man planning to go to the inn, and follows him there. It was Marcel Basso, who a few days later shoots a man named Feinstein there. Feinstein's wife, Mado Feinstein, had been Basso's mistress, and when Feinstein had tried to get money from Basso, and threatened to kill himself if he couldn't, they'd struggled for the gun. Basso is arrested, but escapes.

Maigret returns to the inn, the Guinguette à Deux Sous, for a weekend, though he'd promised Mme Maigret to come to Alsace for a holiday. There he runs into Victor Gaillard, who he realises had been Jean Lenoir's partner. But Gaillard won't tell who the man was. It is through an unlikely source, Maigret's regular afternoon drinking partner from the Taverne Royale, that Maigret is able to find to the truth to the murder 6 years earlier that Jean Lenoir spoke about.

First published in 1931 as "La Guinguette à Deux Sous". Translated in 1940 as "Guinguette by the Seine" by Geoffrey Sainsbury. It is also known as "The Bar on the Seine" and dramatised for radio by Alison Joseph.

With Nicholas Le Provost [Chief Inspector Jules Maigret], Julian Barnes [Georges Simenon], Ron Cook [Sergeant Lucas], Timothy Watson [James], Scott Brooksbank [Jean Lenoir / Victor Gaillard], Sylvester Morand [Marcel Basso], Jonathan Tafler [Feinstein], Tracy Wiles [Mado Feinstein / Mère Mathilde], Rebecca Egan [Mme Basso], Carla Simpson [The Postmistress], Martin Hyder [Police Officer], Richard Firth [Taxi driver], Emma Woolliams [Woman 1], and Laura Doddington [Woman 2].

Music by Lucinda Mason Brown and performed by Alex Kean, Patrick Naylor and Tim Robinson.

Produced and directed by Ned Chaillet
45 minutes

Georges Simenon, the prolific Belgian writer who created the iconic detective Jules Maigret. Simenon wrote 75 Maigret novels and 28 short stories, blending psychological depth with atmospheric settings and understated suspense. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages and adapted across radio, television, and film—making him one of the most widely read European authors of the 20th century.