The Imaginary Invalid

The Dossiers of Inspector Lavardin is a French television series in four 90-minute episodes, created by Dominique Roulet and Claude Chabrol and broadcast between September 15, 1988 and February 1, 1990 on TF1. It follows the two films Chicken in Vinegar and Inspector Lavardin directed by Claude Chabrol and already featuring Jean Poiret in the role of Lavardin. This short series depicts the investigations of Inspector Lavardin, a tongue-in-cheek policeman known for his bad manners.

The pragmatic, reserved and refined Maigret investigates murders in his singular unhurried manner and inevitably discovers the truth.

A sexually repressed school teacher releases her pent up passions in a series of shocking crimes.

A beautiful translation of Molière's works.

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

A Paris real estate developer feels compelled to withdraw from his seemingly perfect life into a world of his own. Is the man going insane? By conventional standards, maybe, but it's clear that the life he's fleeing is madder still from his point of view, and since that point of view is unfailingly witty and astute, we even come to accept his delusions as more "real" than reality.

In southern France, in a quiet little town, the mayor, who also owns a castle with some cattle, is in the wine cellar with some other people: the pharmacist, the veterinary, and some of his employees. As they are drinking wine, they hear a terrible noise and the heat's getting higher and higher. They don't realize what's happening: when they come out of the cellar, they realize that everything has burned, and all the buildings are destroyed...

Julien is an electronics professional who is down on his luck when he decides to enter an international sailboat race. He is led astray from his original good intentions by a low-life press agent who convinces him it would be well worth his while to win the race by illegal maneuvering. As he sets off, flashbacks tell how he came to be on the sailboat; later he has long monologues -- several of them, and in-between he occasionally battles to stay afloat on an uncooperative sea.

A true story shot in a German Impressionistic style. In France during the Nazi occupation, Dr. Petiot (Michel Serrault) offered to help Jews escape the Nazis. They would come to his house, and he would kindly give them lethal "vaccinations" for their anticipated travel to Argentina. Then he would steal everything the brought with them (in addition to their up-front payment to him) and burn their bodies in his home-made crematorium.

During the Crimean War between Britain and Russia in the 1850s, a British cavalry division, led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan, engages in an infamously reckless strategic debacle against a Russian artillery battery.

A vet tries to create his own Garden of Eden

Four Spanish women of very different origins and motivations work in Paris as handmaids.

Henri Rainier has everything a man could want. A glamorous wife, two beautiful daughters and a well-paid job with a large bank. Then, one day, his entire world collapses. In the wake of a high-profile financial scandal, he is summoned into his director's office and accused of negligence. Rainier has no choice but to resign, but he soon realises that he has been made a scapegoat. He begins his own investigation in an attempt to clear his name and discover who is responsible for the enormous hole in the bank's finances. It soon becomes apparent that he is up against a very powerful and dangerous opponent.

Born with their immune systems damaged, Tom and Lola are doomed to live their lives in isolation, sealed in separate plastic bubbles. However, neither cold urethane nor chillier hospital technicians can keep down the beguiling spirit of these indomitable siblings.

Ordered to seduce French captain and steal from him classified papers, Mata Hari, an exotic dancer and a spy, instead falls in love with him and blows the cover.