True crime podcasters have become something of a cliché in crime fiction of late, but the influence of the true crime genre is difficult to ignore – especially when a case is so forcefully portrayed as the one in Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime, which begins on BBC Four in the UK at 9pm on Saturday 31 August. The programme is a thriller-like dramatisation of events beginning with a rape in 1988, in which the police failed to catch a serial sex offender for 30 years. In France it was hailed as an important examination of the flaws in the mechanics of justice.

The title, Sambre, comes from the name of the river where the crimes occurred, and each of the six, hour-long episodes focuses in on one of the key characters involved in the case and the eventual trial. It begins with Christine (Alix Poisson), the victim, a hairdresser from Mauberge who is attacked on her way to work one morning. Although everything is reported to the police, nobody is caught and convicted, and in the coming years further rapes occur in the area. In the second episode, we move to 1996 to meet Irene Dereux (Pauline Parigot), a judge who notices the similarities between cases that have arrived on her desk, and tries to convince the police that there is a serial rapist operating on their turf in Northern France.

Saturday 31 August will bring you two episodes. A week later, on 7 September, you’ll meet Arlette Caruso (Noemie Lvovsky) the mayor of the town in 2003. When yet another woman is raped, Arlette convinces the victim to give a press conference but there are unexpected consequences for both of them. In the fourth episode, we move to the year 2007 and cross the nearby border into Belgium where more rapes have taken place. We follow the work of computer scientist Cecile (Clemence Poesy), who is asked to use algorithms to work out where the rapist might live. This cross-border dimension gives the series a feel a little bit like that of The Bridge, where Danish and Swedish detectives worked together.

On the final Saturday of the series, 14 September, we’re introduced to Commandant Étienne Winckler (Olivier Gourmet), one of the many police officers who have worked the case. In the last episode, we finally catch up with the perpetrator, Enzo Salina (Jonathan Turnbull). Will his victims receive justice?

Throughout the story you’ll see the victims disbelieved by police officers, and male indifference to the crimes perpetrated. Bureaucratic hurdles, and a lack of willpower to overcome them, are highlighted and the story remains relevant – just look at the low conviction rates for sexual crimes in the UK, for example. The story is based on the true crime book Sambre, radioscopie d’un fait divers by journalist Alice Géraud, who wrote the screenplay with Marc Herpoux. The adaptation was directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. Sambre aired in France late in 2023 and went on to win Best Foreign Miniseries at the 2024 Shanghai TV Festival.

Episodes will be available on iPlayer in the UK shortly after broadcast.

We think Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime is one you’ll enjoy if you liked the Swedish true crime show The Hunt for a Killer, about catching a man who abducted a 10-year-old girl in 1989 but wasn’t caught for years, or the Danish show The Investigation, which looked at the murder of journalist Kim Wall on a private submarine.