Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I've never written a review have no idea how to except I have to say something here... I've watched so many series over the years.... Spiral... is my favorite ever... it's the whole package done in excellence...Crime... Detectives... the Judicail system ... the character development.... these relationships ... are very real to life in that they are not glamorized... they're raw... the acting of the main cast... I feel like I know them in a way if they don't have season 7 I'll go into such a disappointment I'll never get over it!! Really give Spiral a chance to unfold before you, you'll be hooked soon!!

It was interesting to see a French detective movie and see how their legal system works. I am reading up on it and it is still a little hard to believe how the justice system works. It has good points, strange points and really WTH points. Everyone gets to charge everyone.The acting is well done, the lead female detective, come on who looks that bad and like a junkie all the time. But she kicks rear ends just hard to believe anyone would go to work every day looking as bad as she does.The female lead as attorney is a great character. Straight for the jugular defending her clients. And a gorgeous redhead to boot.The lead male attorney and the character of the judge Robam were the most interesting characters and made the show worth watching. .Very interesting and pretty well done.NOW for the bad. REAL SPOILER HERE.The people in charge of the squads are so typically Hollywood it is very bad writing. These guys went out of style in the 70s. Throwing temper tantrums, yelling at his cops, the usual idiocy.The real bad.... They killed off the main lead male character who along with Judge Roban were the best parts of the show. Once they killed him off lost interest in the show. Completely. Do enjoy the first 4 seasons but be prepared for a really bad 5th season.I gave it a four because the first 4 seasons.

Some have criticized Spiral-I know not why, but I was hooked in the first few minutes. It came back to mind when I watched the first episode of "Jo", a French-made policier set in Paris, but with English dialogue, some dubbed, some spoken. Bad idea. I couldn't stand it. I'd rather watch French actors speak French in an un-clichéd story as in Spiral. What makes Spiral work is the utterly believable idiosyncratic characters, and how they manage to warp the cases they work on as their lives warp around them. A dedicated woman detective who happily shags every male who joins the murder squad without ever changing her shirt; an undercover detective who manages to succeed at his job while becoming addicted to heroin; a quirky judge who makes common cause with a prosecutor to shoehorn cases through the French judicial system in spite of the laws. There's more, but the point is, it's all Paris, all French, and it acts like it. The stories, the motivations, the legal system-none of it is like a US crime series. I loved Law and Order, which Spiral most resembles, but only superficially. It is about the French judicial system, as L&O was about the American system, but there the similarity ends. The two systems are distinct, and there's not much about Spiral that is familiar. I love it.

A jewel in every aspect.Outstanding acting performed by a perfect cast, vying with each other to deliver extraordinary performances.Gripping scriptwriting, with complex and multi-layered cases, and lively, unforgettable characters (Justice Roban and Marianne, oh my, acting just with the little muscles around the eyes!) Great action and suspense in the service of the plot line.The dark side of Paris, avoiding the tempting, romanticized clichés of the Montmartre for the Foreigner, and showing instead the multi-racial, tense mosaic of today's real France, with its poverty, inequalities, beauty and tricky maneuvering in a Robespierrean Palais-de-Justice.The exact balance between down-to-earth, realistic skepticism in the face of the system cogs ("engrenages") and the stubborn, improbable, almost brutal acts of goodness performed by failed individuals.There is no moral grandeur here, no cardboard heroes nor perfect endings. But you turn off the screen completely satisfied and wishing for more.