It hardly seems like a fair fight: an old guy recovering from serious brain surgery against a young guy who casually dismembers murder victims with a chainsaw.
But hey, most of television's great detectives have entered the ring as apparent underdogs, and Julien Baptiste calmly upholds that tradition in Baptiste, which premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. ET on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery series (check local listings).
If Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo, top) looks familiar, it's because he has survived dangerous TV situations before. He was featured in the hit series The Missing, from which Baptiste spins off.
He returns in the wake of brain surgery and rehab, which leads him to tell anybody who will listen that he is "not the man I was." And he doesn't just mean that he now walks with a limp.
Still, he agrees to assist an old friend by helping to investigate the disappearance of a sex worker in Amsterdam.
The missing woman, Natalie Rose (Anna Próchniak), is the niece of Edward Stratton (Tom Hollander), who explains to Baptiste that he and his wife, Clare (Clare Calbraith), raised Natalie from the age of 14 when her parents were killed in an auto accident. They were so traumatized when she turned to drugs and prostitution that it broke up their marriage, but Edward says he still tries to keep tabs on Natalie and help ensure her safety.
Baptiste quickly sees that Natalie lives and works in a world full of corrupt and ruthless people. What a surprise in the sex industry, huh?
But even by those standards, some of these folks long ago crossed to the darkest side, moving into crimes like murder as they kidnap young girls for sex slavery.
The alpha bad guy seems to be Kim Vogel (Talisa Garcia), formerly known as Dragomir Zelincu. He's the one with the chainsaw. Baptiste learns that Zelincu has a rap sheet as long as the Danube, yet somehow he has never been held to account for what everyone seems to agree have been multiple serious crimes.
While neither Zelincu's work nor the show's other grim doings are portrayed in particularly graphic detail on the screen, it's still strong stuff. A number of scenes are also filmed inside various sex establishments in Amsterdam, meaning scantily clad women making provocative gestures are a running background motif.
Karyo plays Baptiste beautifully, with the calm, controlled understatement of, say, Mark Ryland. He likes to talk through his process, so whenever he's with someone else, like Stratton, he outlines what they have just learned and why it matters.
This helps the viewer by letting us methodically follow Baptiste on the long path from trying to locate one missing woman to unraveling an international criminal operation that doesn't hesitate to use that chainsaw as a tool of persuasion.
Baptiste doesn't break new ground in the TV detective game if there is such a thing. He keeps us interested, though, as he puts the puzzle together one piece at a time. We like him, so we like the show – and once the camera steps outside the sex parlors, Amsterdam is pretty attractive, too.