The story goes that it all started with a British chef who stole veal from an Amsterdam restaurant sometime in 1962 to take home. Nicholas Freeling was arrested and so he ended up in an Amsterdam police cell, where he came into contact with a seasoned detective. This would form the basis for a dozen novels about the figure of Piet van der Valk, the most famous detective from the capital for the English-speaking world.
Freeling’s books about Van der Valk have been filmed a number of times, including by Fons Rademakers in 1973: Because of the Cats† In the early 1970s, British ITV made a popular Inspector series starring Barry Foster. It’s worth looking up some old episodes on YouTube as you get a great view of the city at the time. A new series followed at the beginning of the nineties, and we are now at the umpteenth reincarnation of Van der Valk, with Marc Warren in the lead role.
The new season (the second of the new series) consists of three separate parts of one and a half hours each, with many Dutch actors in addition to the central British cast. The episodes were successively directed by experienced Dutch directors such as Jean van de Velde, André van Duren and Joram Lürsen, but the style book was apparently quite fixed (many drone shots and main characters who are constantly in motion, with or without weapons drawn).
Old Fashioned Policeman
Piet van der Valk is an old-fashioned police officer who needs few words and prefers to pierce suspects with his icy gaze. His subordinates and superiors adore him, which is for the best, for he goes his own way. The detective imported from Scandinavia with a trauma or defect has completely passed over Van der Valk, even though he has not yet found happiness in love. The plots, loosely based on the novels from the sixties, have little to do with real police work, with Amsterdam today, or with the social impact of crime.
And that also has something pleasantly old-fashioned and reassuring. Here we are again with serial killers who put together complex puzzles and it takes place in environments of hip birds of paradise and wealthy diamond merchants; Marcel Hensema and Hadewych Minis do a very good job here. After work, team Van der Valk gathers in a classic brown bar for the after dinner and as a viewer you immediately want to order bitterballen with it. You recognize the city of today, but immediately notice that the image that exists in the world of Amsterdam has changed less than the Dutch themselves sometimes think.
Visually, Amsterdam is doing well, with most scenes shot around the IJ, which, unlike in the early 1970s, now has a fairly cosmopolitan appearance. That the pier of Scheveningen, where the denouement of the first episode (Plague on Amsterdam) takes place, is not just around the corner, only the Dutch viewers will notice.
Van der Valk, season 2
Three part series based on the novels by Nicholas Freeling.
With Marc Warren, Mamie McCoy, Luke Allen-Gale.
Directed by Jean van de Velde, André van Duren, Joram Lürsen.
To be seen on NPO Plus.