---
name: "Alexandra Clert"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/alexandra-clert"
roles: ["Writer"]
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "writer"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T14:16:22.279959+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Alexandra Clert

Writer.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer
- **Elsewhere:** https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1243420

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*Spiral*](https://film.one/tv/spiral.md) (86)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Alexandra Clert

> Alexandra Clert's name is on one series that matters, and it ran for fifteen years. *Spiral* treats French justice as a machine, with the police, the prosecutor, the judge and the defence as worn cogs, and the picture is strong enough to survive a stiff first run.

A case in *Spiral* does not belong to anyone. It passes from Laure Berthaud's squad to the prosecutor's office, to the investigating judge, to the defence bar, and each office does its job and hands it on, slightly the worse for wear. The French title is *Engrenages*, gears, and Alexandra Clert and Guy-Patrick Sainderichin built the series on that picture: four institutions turning against each other, every one of them a little worn. That is the idea, and it held for eight series and 86 episodes, from 13 December 2005 to 2020.

Clert had spent nine years as a criminal lawyer at the Paris bar before she began writing for television, and it shows in where she put the camera. Most police drama stops at the cell door. *Spiral* follows the file into the rooms where deals are done and paperwork goes astray, and treats the prosecutor and the judge as people with careers to protect rather than as furniture for the detectives. Caroline Proust's Berthaud is one of the great television detectives, and the series still never lets her win outright, because somebody further along the corridor always has a say.

Our reservations about *Spiral* are reservations about the machine as first built. The first run is stiff; the pieces are all in place and none of them yet moves easily. The plots knot too tightly, which is what happens when four institutions each need a strand of their own. And the series became itself in later years under Anne Landois, who ran it as showrunner for several seasons, so the credit for its best stretches is shared. What is Clert's is the shape of the thing, and the shape is what got us. Somewhere in the first series we stopped caring who had done the murder and started caring which office would drop the ball, and we do not remember another police series doing that to us.

Since *Spiral* she has written episodes for other French police series, *Capitaine Marleau* (2018) among them, and moved into producing, on *Mongeville* and on *Le Vent des Sables* (2024). We have not reviewed those and will not judge them here. The honest position is that she is a writer with one substantial credit, and that the credit is a good one and a lasting one. If there is a second machine in her, we would like to see it.

## Biography

Alexandra Clert is a French writer and producer. She created the long-running crime series *Spiral* (also known as *Engrenages*), which aired on Canal+ from 2005 to 2020.

Before entering television, Clert practised as a criminal lawyer at the Paris bar. She has written episodes for series including *Capitaine Marleau* and *Family Business*, and has worked as a producer on *Mongeville* and other projects.

*Sources: imdb.com, time-art.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Spiral* (2005), Fi1m 86, Creator — [page](https://film.one/tv/spiral.md)

## Complete filmography (2)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Le Vent des sables* (2024), Producer
- *Spiral* (2005), series, Creator — Fi1m 86, [page](https://film.one/tv/spiral.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/alexandra-clert