Heterdaad (1996)
In this Flemish detective series, the Dutch title of which means in the act, notably "in flagrante delicto", a team of the Belgian (national) police lead by John Nauwelaerts investigates serious crimes, often against the clock as victims sometimes may still be in danger. Special attention is also given to the legally necessary, but sometimes frustrating, interaction with the judicial authorities, other police forces (this inefficiency required a major reform in reality), various experts and lawyers.
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Episode 1 - Episode 31
Release Date: 1999-02-07Armored car driver Jan Stockmans, a failed restaurateur, robs 70,000,000 Belgian francs (about 1,75 million Euro) from his own cash transport. When he shows his wife Viviane the loot, fake Dutch passports and tickets for them and son Dennis to Rio, she refuses. Adjutant John, who wants to close the case by Friday when his holiday plane leaves, meanly arrests her as 'hostage' until she accepts to help set a trap while Dennis is forced to lodge with an aunt. Jan resorts to desperate measures with tragic consequences.
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Episode 2 - Episode 32
Release Date: 1999-02-14At the parking of a dancing just outside the city limits, a girl is found murdered. At first it seems a brutal settlement within the drugs scene. Matti thinks the policeman who were first at the scene act kind of strange. Do they know more? When the force digs deeper, they find dubious conditions within the local police.
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Episode 3 - Episode 33
Release Date: 1999-02-21Petty crook Dimitri starts shooting outside the Belgian parliament but is the only one killed after pointing his gun at a non-uniformed Matti. The team planned to close the file quickly, but is vaguely tipped off by Dimitri's ma and MP Marc Brabants's secretary that the politician may have been the target, perhaps even at the instigation of senator Jacques Van de Kerkhove, who badly begrudges 'Mr. clean' Brabants being marked by their party as future deputy minister. However, Dimitri's family's past also provides interesting rumors and facts in his village.
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Episode 4 - Episode 34
Release Date: 1999-02-28Laurent Lanschot's Brussels agency's star model Vivi De Keyser is found strangled with a pantyhose. Gay colleague Vincent Glenisson explains her bitter rivalry with Bessie Luyten, who probably slept with Laurent. Bessie approaches Willy while he catches up with Vincent, a former playmate, leading to an IA complaint, forcing Willy to out himself, albeit only after Reggie forces him. Vincent plays a key part again after the team examines possibly jealousy of Viv's lover, Michael De Roeck.
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Episode 5 - Episode 35
Release Date: 1999-03-07Communications student Tanja De Roover didn't study for married professor Rummens's college course, expecting the questions in advance as his lover, but he had ti play fair with his teaching assistant Dirk Lauwerijs in attendance, so she fails. The next night, she dies from an asthmatic episode in the mud near her bike. The professor isn't the only one with a dubious alibi, but he's blackmailed by Tanja's vicariously greedily-ambitious ma. Tanja also promised to pass on the questions to her ex-lover, classmate Steven Onsia, a tormented heavy drinker who also failed the exam.
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Episode 6 - Episode 36
Release Date: 1999-03-14Junkie Axel Blijweert works as 'courier' for Fernand Calliauw's car thieves gang. After committing an accidental hit and run, he leaves the BMW behind in panic and turns to his rich pa, who refuses to help, believing it's another ploy to buy drugs. The victim's pa, ex-con Arnold Bakelant, hates the adjutant for the way he was arrested and got the maximum term, so he won't cooperate. Axel's corpse is found, shot twice execution-style. Did Bakeland get to him, or is the plot thicker, especially considering Bakeland has terminal cancer? More crime follows soon.
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Episode 7 - Episode 37
Release Date: 1999-03-21Lonely gray mouse Matthys is found by her chiropractor Dirk Van Gelder, murdered at home, the corps covered with a dress too small in size. The only lead is that she was called by Mr. Joosen's telemarketing firm, notably sole male operator Donald Blomme, a loner, who lies to cover up he met the victim. The MO fits an earlier case, from which the dress seems passed on. The team can't prove anything against the apparent model citizen, so they set up a trap with the female cop as bait.
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Episode 8 - Episode 38
Release Date: 1999-03-28Retired industrialist Rasenberg is found is his car, shot trough the head with his hunting rifle. It wasn't an actual suicide, in fact he had a bicycle accident and a cardiac episode. The late widower's son Antoine never worked but ran up debt, his sister Corinne openly bugged everyone with rude objections to the millionaire's affair with cemetery flowers seller Rita Moens, whom she implicitly accuses of theft. The notary informs Tibo, whose pa is his hunting friend on the Rasenberg and friends' hunting range, he made an appointment to change his will, but never specified how.
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Episode 9 - Episode 39
Release Date: 1999-04-04Kurt Van Kampenhout, who runs a municipal youth center, is arrested and treated with vicious hostility by John, whose excessive anger spills over to abuse his team, after an unsubstantiated claim by Joke Prinsen (17) that he molested her. The whole community turns against Kurt, except the alderman who is his superior, even after his release for lack of proof and credible alibi. Joke's devoted brother Ulrich, who works in the family butchery, even utters death treats. Joke's mother is forced to admit she had an affair with Kurt. Shortly after, Kurt is brutally murdered. Joke and her mate Bernadette confess their charge was bogus.
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Episode 10 - Episode 40
Release Date: 1999-04-11After local singer David De Preter's Mexican Indian souvenir machete is found in a field and identified as murder weapon, he admits he found Kurt murdered, again drunk. Youth center barman Jeroen Pauwels is caught during a nightly attempt to steal his hidden diary, which contains enough dirt, mainly coded, to blackmail nearly all Grimbergen VIPS. Among them Kurt's boss, the alderman, Joke's cahoot Bernadette's father, whose family was never thoroughly investigated after the suspicious suicide of an in-living girl.