While Atkinson is physically slight, he retains the clothing and the smoking, as any other decision would be like playing James Bond without wearing a dinner jacket. Simenon personally preferred his psychological novels without a cop in them but it is Maigret – whose stolid and ponderous manner was a prelude to eventual bursts of thrilling intuition – who has brilliantly outlived him. A rapid writer who thought novels should be short, he regularly published three Maigrets a year, although these policiers amounted to less than a quarter of his eventual output of around 350 books. This fleeting image, solidified as Jules Maigret, a commissaire of the Brigade Criminelle in Paris, served Simenon in 75 novels and 28 short stories published between 19. Any other decision would be like playing James Bond without a dinner jacket While drinking in a cafe, Simenon, a Belgian who had moved to France to pursue a writing career, had an inspirational vision of a Parisian policeman, “a large powerfully built gentleman … a pipe, a bowler hat, a thick overcoat”.Ītkinson retains the pipe. Maigret began as a closeup in the mind’s eye of the writer.

And the stage direction soon continues: “He pushed the telegram away, rose ponderously to his feet.” This sense, in the new David Bellos translation for Penguin Classics, that Simenon was writing a camera script turned out to be prophetic because Rowan Atkinson, who assumes the part in a series of feature-length specials for ITV, follows several other small-screen Maigrets, including Rupert Davies and Michael Gambon in Britain, Jean Richard and Bruno Cremer in France and Gino Servi in Italy. “Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Flying Squad raised his eyes,” begins Pietr the Latvian. T he opening paragraph of Georges Simenon’s first novel about his most enduring character has the feel of instructions to an actor.

Maigret trap