En garde! The swashbuckler hero is back and sexier than ever. Based on a series of historical novels by Jean-Francois Parot, Nicolas Le Floch (MHz Choice), is a dashing romp set in Paris and Versailles during the ornate reigns of Louis XV and XVI. It was a tempestuous time of panting bosoms, roistering aristocrats, and skulking treachery, when sword fights could break out in any cobblestoned street, every carriage ride might fall prey to masked ruffians, and the muttering peasants are getting restless, downright surly. Whatever the perils in the 12 episodes of approximately 90 minutes each, nothing daunts Jerome Robart’s handsome, high-spirited Nicolas Le Floch (known to his fellow nobles as the Marquis de Ranreuil), a commissaire with the King’s Police dispatched to investigate crimes and conspiracies that threaten the throne. As nimble as the Scarlet Pimpernel, as flashy with the blade as Zorro, Nicolas is assisted—sometimes impeded—by his superior, Monsieur de Sartine, played with Comédie-Française flair by Francois Caron. Primping, powdering his wigs, and flicking his hankies, Sartine seems to know everything that’s treacherously afoot without leaving his chambers. Historical personages appear, from Madame de Pompadour to the playwright Beaumarchais, yet the ancien regime has never seemed more contemporary, more attuned to our modern tempo. Mar-a-Lago, c’est dommage, such a shabby comedown from Versailles. —James Wolcott