Van der Valk Mysteries, Set 1

Product Description Commisaris Simon "Piet" van der Valk (Barry Foster, Frenzy, Smiley’s People) has the air of a man who has seen it all. And he probably has. As a detective with the Amsterdam police, his daily caseload brings him into regular contact with the seamy underside of the Dutch capital. From brothels to transvestite clubs to drug dens, Van der Valk moves in the city’s dark corners that tourists rarely see. Suave but cynical, the cultured Van der Valk has a taste for the finer things in life--symphony music, good wine, and the cooking of his beautiful French-born wife. But even long-suffering Arlette (Susan Travers) can tell that Piet is most at home when he’s at work. There, alongside easygoing Inspecteur Johnny Kroon (Michael Latimer), every new case is a personal challenge to this unorthodox cop on the streets of old Amsterdam. BONUS: biography of Van der Valk creator, novelist Nicolas Freeling. Amazon.com Van Der Valk Mysteries: Set 1 offers up a cruder, more intuitive detective hero than most crime-drama series. This Dutch television show that aired in the 1970s has apparently become somewhat of cult classic, due to its focus on Amsterdam's seedy underground culture at the time. For those who romanticize the glam-rock days when people were left alone to smoke their own hookah and pursue their eccentricities, Van Der Valk Mysteries may feel stylishly punk. The six hour-long episodes included in this collection star Commisaris Simon "Piet" Van Der Valk (Barry Foster) and his underling, Johnny Kroon (Michael Latimer), who solve crimes between shots of whiskey and pints of beer. It's staggering to watch two cops get tanked while they arrive at some new, twisted truth. Few of the scenes adapted from author Nicolas Freeling's novel actually show Van Der Valk without a glass in his hand. He's a renegade, and it makes for a fun watch. Though Van Der Valk's hard-boiled approach to solving murder mysteries is sarcastically humorous at times, these shows are more noir than comedy. They elucidate the culture of Amsterdam at the time of the series' filming. Episode 2, "Destroying Angel," for example, centers upon, on one hand, a man whose fingerprints have been melted off after he has been poisoned. When he's found in a brothel above the local bar, Van Der Valk suspects the typical underbelly, and interviews everyone from hippies wearing god's eye necklaces to Army evaders to prostitutes. While heroin smuggling does enter the conversation, Van Der Va