Tonight on Canal+: a shocking and horrifying series about one of Belgium’s most famous criminal cases

What is it about?

Against the background of known and unsolved crimes in Belgium, 1985 begins when three friends – Vicky, his brother Frank and his best friend Mark – make a fresh start by moving to Brussels. As their young adult lives and careers begin, the trio will lose their innocence and illusions when they find themselves in the middle of these horrific events that have shocked a generation and marked an entire country.

1985 TV series created by Willem Wallin with Timen Govaerts, Aimee Clay, Mona Mina Leon… Mondays from 21:10, two evening episodes.

What are the Brabant Murders?

In 1985, the screenwriter Willem Wallin returns to an event that marked Belgium in the early 1980s. To do this, he offers a series of pure fiction, with three heroes who did not actually exist. For viewers not born in Belgium, or after the fact, Wallin chooses a pedagogy to tell us about the era, the culture and these various facts, making us discover them through the eyes of Mark (Tijmen Govaerts) and his best friend Frank. (Aimé Claeys), who both return to the gendarmerie, and Vicky (Mona Mina Leon), Frank’s sister, who continues her brilliant law studies while hosting a pirate radio station.

They will be our guides in this story, which begins in 1981, the year they enter adulthood for good, Mark and Frank joining the gendarmerie and Vicki taking her independence to Brussels to continue her legal studies. With these life choices, the three friends distance themselves, each placing themselves at different points on the political spectrum.

The series shows the corruption in the Belgian Gendarmerie, the infiltration of the extreme right. And each episode is highlighted by a real-time account of the attack. It is up to the viewer to make connections between what he is being told and these repeatedly disparate facts that make up the stories.

The Brabant Killers, also referred to as the Nivelles gang in the Dutch-language media and the Mad Brabant Killers in the French-language media, are responsible for a series of violent attacks that took place mainly in the Belgian province of Brabant between 1982 and 1985.

A total of 28 people were killed and 22 injured during this robbery. The actions of the gang, believed to consist of a core of three men, made it Belgium’s most famous unsolved crime series. Active participants were known as the giant, a tall man who might have been the leader; The assassin, the main gunner, and the old, middle-aged man who was driving.

The identity of the killers of Brabant and their whereabouts are unknown. While significant resources are still being devoted to the case, the latest arrests involve then-senior inspectors, now retired, over alleged tampering with evidence. The gang abruptly ceased its activities in 1985. The chaotic investigation that followed failed to catch them or even make any serious progress in solving the case.

This led to a parliamentary investigation and a public debate, both of which concerned the possibility that the gang members were elements of Belgian or foreign state security carrying out covert missions (including targeted killings and creating) or carrying out acts of political terrorism. The investigation cell still exists today and continues to investigate the case.

1985 is not the first piece of fiction inspired by the Brabant murders. In 2017, the film Assassins with Lubna Azabal, Olivier Gourmet and Bulli Lehners clearly portrays many elements of the case. In 2018, it was the film “Don’t Shoot”, which went back to the facts from the point of view of a 9-year-old boy who was wounded in an attack by Brabant assassins and lost his sister and parents.