Review: Characters, plus the usual sex, violence, etc., make ‘Spotless’ memorable TV

Well, clearly Esquire Network didn’t get the memo about “peak TV.” The NBCUniversal-owned network is launching “Spotless,” its first scripted series, on Saturday and unfortunately for all our already overstocked DVRs and streaming lists, it’s pretty darn good.

Set in London, with French undertones, “Spotless” may seem like a pastiche of “quality programming” — lots of sex, violence, dark comedy and moral ambiguity — but creators Ed McCardie (the British “Shameless”) and Corinne Marrinan (“CSI”) understand that characters are what make memorable television, though the shifting moods of the cinematography certainly doesn’t hurt either.

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Jean Bastiere (Marc-Andre Grondin) is a Frenchman living in London where his troubled frame of mind is reflected in his choice of profession: As proprietor of a forensic cleaning business, he spends his days mopping up after murders and suicides.

Although apparently good-hearted and happily married to Julie (Miranda Raison), with a nice home and two lovely kids, Jean is a man with secrets, including financial problems and an ongoing affair. This precarious balance between light and dark is upset by the appearance of his brother Martin (Denis Menochet, from “Inglourious Basterds.”)

Martin has no such inner tension. A sloppy yet charming hedonist, he is also an unapologetic criminal who wears his nihilistic heart on his sleeve and arrives bearing the latest mess he’s gotten himself into, a mess he needs Jean to clean up.

And though Martin is the last person Jean wants to see at his door, the two share a violent and abusive past, including a climactic act that has created an inviolable bond. Through a series of expositional events handled more gracefully than normal for a story of this sort, Jean finds himself drawn into Martin’s world, where his unique skill set draws the attention of local mobster Nelson Clay, a man who is surrounded by all manner of instantly intriguing thugs and played with genial intensity by “Downton Abbey’s” Brendan Coyle.

And here I, and the show’s creators, could be accused of burying the lead. Even without the delicious prospect of watching him play against his best-known role, Coyle is a terrific performer who brings new possibility to the rather time-worn notion of the gentleman mobster.

But he’s the icing on the cake, rather than the cake itself. Grondin, Menochet and the writers also add new dimension to familiar characters and their odd-couple relationship. Grondin consistently underplays Jean’s battle with despair while Menochet makes Martin as kind and sexy as he is grimy and amoral.

“Spotless” is a story of family, how the past cements certain things and sets others adrift; we build ourselves, then, out of substance and absence. Then something changes and we must tear it all down and start again.

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‘Spotless’

Where: Esquire

When: 10 p.m. Saturday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under 14)