French true crime broke barriers this year when the nonfiction miniseries “Unsuspected” premiered at Séries Mania.

Such a showcase is rare for a factual program, but “Unsuspected” is a documentary unlike any other. Bringing together two filmmakers with backgrounds in narrative feature filmmaking and investigative reporting, this four-part investigation of a cold case from the 1970s blends archival narratives with textured reconstructions, making it a project that defies easy categorization.

“It’s clear that the boundaries are becoming blurred,” says Julia Schulte of France TV Distribution. “Is it fiction? Is it documentary? It’s hard to say – and we’re getting to a point where those boundaries are harder to draw. However, what is absolutely clear is that the series is very, very entertaining.”

Produced by Elodie Polo Ackermann, the artistic director of Imagissime, behind the hit Netflix series “Who Killed Little Gregory?”, the mini-series selected by Séries Mania focused on a captivating narrative as it followed a Parisian psychiatrist obsessed with closing the book on a series of sexual assaults and homicides that have remained unsolved for over four decades.

With its clean lines and narrative weight, the title has opened up new perspectives since Lille, now that France TV will broadcast the series in a prime-time fiction block. And the program is one of many to advance the true crime genre.

“The two worlds are coming closer than ever,” Schulte explains. “Normally, the boxes are strictly separated. Documentary buyers don’t usually turn to fiction, and vice versa. But today we can see a greater permeability between the two, because French producers have shown what is possible.”

French talent has played a major role in the rise of true crime. As the director of the seminal 2004 miniseries “The Staircase,” Oscar winner Jean-Xavier de Lestrade could easily call himself the godfather of the genre. More recently, the godfather has worked on scripted and showrun miniseries like the HBO original series “Laetitia” and the critically acclaimed “Sambre: Anatomy of a Crime.” Whether chronicling a 2011 murder case or more than three decades of sexual assault, both have used true crime as a framework for broader sociological concerns.

The results have been excellent. “Sambre, Anatomy of a Crime” broke prime-time records when it aired on public channel France 2 last winter, with more than 4 million viewers per episode and an average market share of 19%. The mini-series also attracted 3 million online views and nearly 6 million VOD readings.

Other filmmakers have found success by reopening the same case in two different versions. Production companies La Dame de Cœur and Effervescence first explored a 1970s murder with the crime documentary “L’affaire Agnès Leroux: Confidences d’une forçat,” released in 2022, before bringing back the pomp and refinement of the scripted version, “French Roulette – Le ordeal d’une mère.” The latter series, set in Nice, was bought by Paramount and was the first French original series when the Paramount+ platform launched in Gaul.

And while crime drama remains a driving force in the United States, Scandinavia and Germany, France TV’s Julia Schulte believes that settings like the Côte d’Azur in “French Roulette” and the Paris of “Unsuspected” can give these titles much more cachet while helping French series stand out in international markets that already have strong local production.

“There are a lot of strong images associated with France,” she says. “As we clearly saw with the Olympics, Paris remains quite magical for the whole world, even in English-speaking markets. We are able to export that as well.”