Julie Lescaut

1 9 9 2 – 2 0 1 4 (France)
101 x 90 minute episodes

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