Sleeping Dog – Season 1 Episode 4 “Chez Amis” Recap & Review

Chez Amis

Episode 4 of Sleeping Dog begins with Jule picked up by Tom at the side of the road. He hands over some tissues and tells her to clean up her face. She’s in shock and the adrenaline courses through her veins, causing her to speak at a million miles an hour. When Jule does compose herself, the pair head into the parking lot, where she’s shocked to find the car is gone.

Tom encourages Jule to calm herself down, get cleaned up and have a stiff drink to comprehend what’s happened. While Tom holds her, Atlas heads off to see Zaric, who confirms that he was stoned at the time of the Judge Herres case. He promises to find out the truth about what happened 8 months back though, and calls out Zaric for being a pretty terrible friend, given he’s sleeping with Lenni right now.

When Atlas heads back to see canal girl, she’s livid to find out he’s thrown away all of her pills. Given she’s an addict, she demands he return them by the time she comes back later on in the day. But of course, Mike Atlas does no such thing.

Meanwhile, Jule and Tom exchange glances during the meeting with the DA about the case. There’s been no news of Jurgen or the car, or anything else that’s happened. Corinna is also “optimistic” that they’re going to find a match on the cigarette butt DNA, pinning this all together and tying it up with a neat bow. Tom is conflicted and believes he’s stuck his neck out enough for Jule, pointing out this is too big for her and he’s done with this “conspiracy bullshit”.

Tom does continue to look into this though in his own way, and discovers that eyewitnesses have found a homeless man sniffing around the crime scene in the playground. This is, of course, hinting toward Atlas showing up and finding the stray hair. Speaking of which, Atlas finds out that Jurgen was murdered, courtesy of a call to Jule, who confirms as much.

Jule urges Atlas to meet by the river, but just before he hangs up, Atlas points out that he never found strands of Mussa’s hair at the Herres crime scene, given he was high on drugs at the time. Now, further flashbacks seem to hint that Zaric got him addicted to pills, encouraging him to take “one pill at a time” to help with some sort of trauma, seemingly knowing that he’d end up addicted.

Atlas visits Tinka and she hands over the USB file to him. In doing so, there are pictures of Zaric with Judge Herres. There’s also a strange symbol on one of the letters they’re holding too. Atlas’ cold and closed demeanour is enough for Tinka to put her foot down and demand answers.

Given they used to share a lot together, Mike Atlas is like a different person now. He’s been closed and reserved for a long time and his daughter just wants her father to be there for her. Upon hearing this, Atlas does open up and admits that he ran away because of the mistakes he’s made in the past. Specifically that involving the case and being on drugs. He wants to come back home and is working to make that happen, but in order to do so, he needs to crack this Herres case and find out how it ties into Zaric and Mussa.

Adebayo heads off to visit her girlfriend and the pair spend the night together. In the morning, she broaches the idea of adopting Lottie, the concussed child, but Adebayo is shut down, with her telling Adebayo to “get a cat or something”.

Jule meets Chiara at the high-end brothel and questions her about the Jurgen photography case with Herres. She admits to what she did pretty nonchalantly. Each of the guests at the brothel chooses a “Des Amis” name. Her regular was Sergei, but he wasn’t Russian like Jurgens thought. He was actually German. The last time she was him was just before Christmas. And guess who that man was? Yep, it’s Ulf, the married man whom we saw Jule sleep with earlier in the series.

Ulf is the one who hired a private investigate to dig up dirt on Herres. There was nothing useful to use against Herres so he just go rid of all the photos and moved on. Ulf admits he screwed up and even offers to divorce Vera to get with her. Jule scoffs at the notion and tells him to inform Vera of everything before leaving. It does seem like this is a dead-end and just a coincidence, especially as Jule doesn’t realize that she’s being watched by a hooded man from afar.

Atlas takes the footage he’s found to Judge Herres’ wife’s house. He explains who he is and shows off the symbol on the letter. Apparently this correlates to the Benedictus homeless charity. Herres was actually a supporting member and hearing this, Atlas now realizes that Mussa didn’t kill him, and he doubles down on discovering the truth. Unfortunately, she finds the pills in Atlas’ pocket and makes a damning call to the authorities.

Unaware of all this, Atlas continues to look trough the documents, and finds the letter in question within the Judge’s office. The letter itself mentions the Polyphemus case and a crucial bit of evidence that says “a witness statement contradicts the location where the body was found”. Could this body be linked to whoever this Polyphemus is?

In the wake of all this, Atlas is blindsided by Zaric, who shows up with Doctor Berners. Mrs Herres has phoned them but Atlas is having none of it. Apparently Zaric was just trying to help him in the past, but he’s incredulous that Atlas doesn’t remember what he did. A hysterical Mike Atlas is taken by paramedics and bundled in the back of an ambulance.

The Episode Review

Zaric is a key part of this case but similarly, it’s unclear right now whether he’s really a crook or trying to help. Seeing how Ulf, the guy Jule slept with earlier in the series, fits into this is a nice touch, but less endearing is this is the subplot involving Adebayo.

We’ve said it throughout the series here but there’s absolutely no reason for her character to exist. The subplot is pointless to the overarching mystery and now, 4 episodes down, she’s made no significant contribution to the main plot.

This episode, more so than the others, has a good amount of filler too and there are a fair few redundant scenes that could have been cut completely. Having said that though, there’s enough in this to keep watching, so we’ll have to wait and see where this case goes next.