France Télévision offers to discover for free, in streaming and in full, a new detective series which looks back on a terrible French judicial error.
Television is increasingly inspired by news stories that have marked French society in recent years. From November 13, 2023, viewers can dive back into one of these sordid affairs which lasted no less than thirty years: that of the Sambre rapist.
In Sambreinspired by the investigation book by Alice Géraud Sambre, fluoroscopy of a news itemFrance 2 dissects the legal horror that this news item represented. From 1988 to 2018, Dino Scala carried out nearly 54 rapes, attempted rapes and sexual assaults in France and Belgium, around the Sambre river, on public roads.
The French serial rapist was arrested in 2018 before being tried three years later. In July 2022, he was sentenced to 20 years of criminal imprisonment. He himself confessed to around forty facts.
By making a series on this news item, director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade explains in the columns of Ouest-France that “the idea was not to tell the news item itself but to tell what this news item is said about us and why it took 30 years to unmask the culprit. The series thus analyzes the workings of rape culture through different protagonists: the victims and the rapist, but also the investigators, the justice system and even the police.
Alix Poisson also plays Christine, one of the rapist’s victims. In an interview with Ouest-France, she also talks about what this news story says about current society and the way we perceive attackers: “What we didn’t want to see for years is that 90 or even 95% of rapists are completely normal guys, who have a family, who go to work. They are there, before our eyes, but we don’t see them.”
Episodes already visible for free
The rest of the cast is made up of familiar faces: Noémie Lvovsky plays the mayor and Clémence Poésie a scientist. Olivier Gourmet lends his features to a gendarmerie commander. Finally, the role of the rapist is played by Jonathan Turnbull, who made appearances in the series Sentinels and the movie See Paris again.
Sambre is broadcast every Monday at 9:10 p.m. on France 2. But all the episodes are already available for streaming on the france.tv platform. To access it, simply register for free to the site to have access to all the episodes, but also to the rest of France Télévision programs.