Photo courtesy of Masterpiece Theatre Mystery
Baptiste
In several of his recent roles, Liam Neeson has played an aging action hero—the older dude who can knock some heads together. But there is an alternative. In the British series “Baptiste” airing on PBS Masterpiece Mystery, Tcheky Karyo plays a different sort of senior hero. Reprising his role in an earlier series, “The Missing,” Karyo stars as Julien Baptiste, a retired police detective in Amsterdam who survived a brain tumor. “I’m slower now,” he reminds his hearers, including the city’s police commissioner. And he runs with a limp, putting him at ill-advantage in a foot chase. “I’m slower now,” he repeats, referring to his speed in assembling clues into solutions.
For me, the reason for watching “Baptiste” began with its setting, Amsterdam, a city of tree-lined canals and beautiful memories. In the 1970s it was an incredibly tolerant, cosmopolitan city where hash could be had in cafes and the sex trade was zoned, licensed and taxed.
Some of the local color remains, yet “Baptiste” takes place now—well, pre-COVID now—with the warm glow long turned darker and colder. Harder drugs have hollowed out many lives and mobs from the former Soviet Bloc have muscled into the city’s underworld. Called on to investigate a missing young woman, Baptiste goes down into the labyrinth from his comfortable homelife, happily married if sparring a bit with his daughter and son-in-law.
Did I mention that he’s slower now? Maybe this has as much to do with his tumor as a world that changed rapidly but almost imperceptibly. The facades of 40 years ago largely stand but behind them have occurred dramatic shifts in social expectations, politics and economics—not to mention technology. Baptiste uses computers with the hesitant touch of a stranger. He seems surprised by much of what he finds in the new reality.
“You think I’m a dinosaur now?” Baptiste asks a dismissive, cocky young cop. But although he makes his way like a traveler from a distant country, Baptiste sees many things more clearly than folks with their faces in their screens. He’s a survivor of a major health crisis and a slightly grumpy role model for an older generation that still has much to contribute.
“Baptiste” is broadcast on Milwaukee PBS Channel 10, 9 p.m. Sundays.
