Broadcast from 1992 to 2014 on TF1 (France), La Une-RTBF (Belgium) and TSR (Switzerland), Julie Lescaut starred Véronique Genest as the titular police officer.
Superintendent Lescaut faced all the typical problems one might have anticipated for a female cop.
Policemen didn’t think she was up to the job, and speculated uncharitably about how she might have got it – through a misguided equal opportunities directive, through positive discrimination, or perhaps by sleeping with the bosses.
Even after she’d demonstrated that she was every bit as good as they were, they were not placated; indeed, they resented her even more.
Meanwhile, at home, divorced Julie was raising two daughters, Sarah (Jennifer Lauret) and Babou (Joséphine Serre), who never came to terms with the way their mother put her work before everything else.
Viewers who tuned in expecting fast action and regular violence were disappointed.
This was seldom a spectacular show, but one that dealt at a leisurely pace with the heroine’s problems of reconciling life and work and her struggles to undermine sexist stereotypes.
It also concentrated more on the psychological motivations of the criminals than on their shoot-’em-up deeds.
Julie Lescaut ran for more than 100 episodes and regularly returned viewing figures of around 6 million. The audience was predominantly female, understandably, but the show also appealed to everyone who preferred cerebral drama to simplistic cops-and-robbers tales.
Julie Lescaut
Véronique Genest Sarah Lescaut
Jennifer Lauret Babou Lescaut
Joséphine Serre Detective Motta
Alexis Desseaux Detective Justin N’Guma
Mouss Diouf Héroux
Pierre Cognon Detective David Kaplan
Renaud Marx Corporal Leveil
Jean-Paul Rouve Rémi Mertens
Eriq Ebouaney Paul Lescaut
François Marthouret Christelle
Sophie Artur
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Superintendent Lescaut faced all the typical problems one might have anticipated for a female cop.
