On Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m., NHK will broadcast in two parts an award-winning French miniseries about "The Dominici Affair" on its BS-2 channel. The 2003 dramatization revisited one of France's most notorious criminal cases, introducing new evidence.
In 1952, an elderly company owner named Gaston Dominici was accused of murdering an English family who had stopped near his small village to have a picnic. With no other suspects and the local media screaming for results, the police invented a case against Dominici and he was subsequently convicted and sentenced. President Charles de Gaulle, however, pardoned Dominici in 1960.
Dominici said he was innocent, but his sons provided testimony that helped the police with their case against him. The sons, it was later found, held a grudge against their father, and on closer inspection there was no solid evidence provided in the trial that showed Dominici was the murderer. The dramatization, which stars veteran actor Michel Serrault as Dominici, recounts the murder, the investigation, and the trial in detail.