Lupin is back for the next chapter

Lupin has quietly reappeared for a second series and this time the French language hit delivers a more relatable hero.

Omar Sy in Lupin, season two.

As unexpectedly as Lupin arrived and then disappeared like one of its hero’s magic tricks – a wonderful piece of legerdemain by Netflix – the brilliant French language crime series has returned.

Again there was no fanfare and little publicity, though the show, produced by Gaumont Television and created by George Kay (Criminal) in collaboration with Francois Uzan (Family Business), is now an international hit.

In its first month 76 million households discovered the celebrated French actor Omar Sy and his splendid creation the gentleman thief Assane Diop, enveloped in that suave costume of long flapping trench coat, beret, black jeans and white classic Air Jordan sneakers, as he entertained audiences in countries as dissimilar as Germany, Brazil, and the Philippines.

According to the streaming platform, Lupin is Netflix’s second biggest original debut of all time. And Forbes reported that a day after the release of Part Two, Lupin had already entered Netflix’s Top 10 across the globe, in first place in France, Belgium and Germany, with the new series within most countries’ top five. (It’s currently six in Australia.)

As Time recently suggested, maybe Lupin’s success is due to the fact that with its extravagantly and skilfully engineered high-speed chases, fast and gaudy escape set-pieces set against those sumptuous Parisian landmarks, rocketing narrative pace and an underpinning of resonant racial implications, “it’s that rare and precious thing, an action blockbuster for grown-ups”.

If you happened to have missed this TV behemoth, the show follows Diop, a Senegalese ­immigrant brought to Paris as a child by his ­father Babakar for a less disadvantaged life, as a series of serendipitous happenings conspire to thrust him into what becomes a continuing story of revenge.

The narrative as it plays out in cleverly pitched flashbacks is shaped by a book containing the adventures of the fictional thief Arsene Lupin, written a century earlier by the celebrated author Maurice Leblanc. Lupin, wearing a trademark top hat and monocle, is a gentleman thief, a master of disguise, a rogue but never a killer, a kind of lone ranger who somehow redeems the world by taking from the rich who have exploited the poor.

Epitome of the Belle Epoque dandy, he is widely regarded as one of France’s most famous literary creations and the series in its witty fashion honours Leblanc’s contributions to French culture.

The story of Lupin turns on the way the novel is given to young Diop by his father before Babakar is framed for stealing the priceless Queen’s Necklace from the wealthy and corrupt Pellegrini family for whom he works. His father dies by his own hand in prison, his son burdened by an inheritance of mishap and tragedy from which his adoption of the persona of Lupin redeems him.

That book, Maurice Leblanc’s Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar, becomes a kind of spiritual guide to a young Diop, informing many of his choices as his life develops, a continual series of motivations as he becomes a man. “Arsene Lupin isn’t just a book,” Diop says. “He’s my heritage. My method. My path. I am Lupin.”

There was much for the series’ writers to work with as Leblanc’s Lupin went on to appear in 17 novels and 39 novellas in narratives that detailed a wide range of escapades, heists and mischief.

(A favourite quote from the novel that’s so inspirational to Diop: “Arsene Lupin, the eccentric gentleman who operates only in the chateaux and salons, and who, one night, entered the residence of Baron Schormann, but emerged empty-handed, leaving, however, his card on which he had scribbled these words: ‘Arsene Lupin, gentleman-burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine.’”)

Kay says he uses the Leblanc novels as inspiration and a “get-out-of-jail free card” when he’s stuck, taking ideas from the books and using them in different ways.

“We’ve got to be careful about where fiction within our fictional show exists, where that line crosses over into just our show,” he says. “Once we set up that grammar, we have to cherry-pick and be knowing in our references.” Just like their hero, the mercurial, magical Assane Diop.

The final episode in the first series left us dangling on a momentous cliff hanger, a narrative turning point set at Normandy’s Etretat beach, famous for its chalk-white cliffs and once a favourite of the impressionist painters. The location is also a pilgrimage site for fans of Leblanc’s character – the 1909 Lupin book, The Hollow Needle features the pretty town, and Diop had taken his family there so his son Raoul (Etan Simon) – to whom he had also given a copy of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar – could take part in a festival celebrating his new hero.

And at the end of the episode, on the promenade which is the scene of the Lupin celebration, jammed with aficionados wearing his original costume of top hat and flowing black cape, Lupin’s son is abducted.

He’s wrangled and bundled into the boot of a grey BMW by Pellegrini’s hit man, the dangerous Leonard (Adama Niane). He’s obviously a formidable adversary but he’s seen by the policeman Guedira (Soufiane Guerrab), who, having found a way to track the flamboyant thief using the Leblanc novels, was closely following Diop and his family; the cops starting to circle the bandit with seemingly magical powers.

The detective approaches him and asks if he’s looking for a kid dressed up as Lupin, like so many on the promenade and tells him he saw the boy being tossed into the grey car. Diop’s ex-girlfriend, mother of Raoul and Diop’s long-suffering high-school sweetheart Claire (Ludivine Sagnier) is distraught, furious at him and threatens to call the police, but Diop pleads for her trust, adamant that she can’t involve the authorities.

As a frantic chase ensues, Diop for once not five steps ahead of everybody else, no magician’s tricks at hand, we start to flashback to Diop’s past and the beginnings of his longstanding relationship with Claire. The first takes us back to 1995 when the young Assane, besotted with Claire, steals a violin for her to play at an audition when hers is broken. But when she attends her function, the music store owner, who Diop earlier had accused of being racist, turns up with the cops.

The sequence begins to deliver a contextual framework to the story of their relationship, one that is constantly jeopardised by Diop. And these flashbacks are different to the so-called “past tense flashbacks” that provide differing perspectives on Diop’s stunts – such an amusing part of the show – as they start the process of explaining how he goes from racial abuse and discrimination to becoming, well, invisible.

It’s a major turning point in Diop’s story, the first time his identity has had consequences for his family, the gentleman thief having kept his swashbuckling life secret from most. But now Assane Diop’s all-consuming quest for vengeance against the Pellegrinis has quite possibly brought his family unstuck and threatened their lives. Now, he must not only continue to obtain justice for his father but has to somehow save Raoul from the Pellegrini henchman.

Kay is still obviously determined to reimagine Leblanc’s original narratives, reflecting and cleverly referencing the actual sources, but for the second series he has adopted a less contextual approach and the overall story has suddenly become slightly less fanciful, less mischievous, and more personal.

Unlike the original Lupin, whose sheer self-belief makes him seem almost supernatural, Diop is also an ordinary man, behind the wise guy coolness and the outrageous capers, behind the veneer of taut self-control, is a lonely outsider desperate for the love of his family. And he’s dismayed that he has allowed his son to become a pawn in his quest to exact retribution on the evil Pellegrinis.

“We’re not going to relate to the guy who can rob the Louvre without breaking a sweat unless he’s got these kind of everyday, universal problems that we all have,” Kay told Vanity Fair. “That prevents us from having smug characters who think that they can just go out with beautiful women one day, another one the next … I wasn’t interested in that. I don’t like some of those characters, so I wanted to try and change that.”

There are few alterations to the creative team, though the original director, the veteran action mechanic Louis Letterier, who set the frantic style of the series, its cumulative momentum, and the way so much of what occurs is set so cleverly against those picturesque Parisian landmarks, such a feature of the show, has departed.

Ludovic Bernard directs the first two episodes and Hugo Gelin the final chapters, their brief obviously to make the series more emotionally relatable without losing the kind of Hitchcockian pastiche affected by the clever Letterier, who was part of the creation and conception of Lupin from its early days.

The music is again from composer Mathieu Lamboley, his soundtrack, a kind of musical landscape, like another character in the show, and like the series itself it’s a witty, playful hybrid of the classical with the contemporary.

Welcome back Monsieur Omar Sy and your gifted and entertaining creative accomplices.

Lupin, Season Two streaming on Netflix.