Published in 1985, Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer introduced readers to the character of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man in 1700s France who has a heightened sense of smell and murders people so he can preserve their scent. RUN LOLA RUN director Tom Tykwer turned the story into a feature film in 2006, and now Suskind's novel has served as the inspiration for a six episode Perfume television series that will be released through the Netflix streaming service in December. But this series is not the adaptation you might expect.
The trailer for the German series can be viewed below, and in it you won't find Grenouille killing people in the 1700s. This is a modern day murder mystery that stars Friederike Becht as
a criminal profiler investigating a series of brutal murders that trace back to a group of boarding school kids who experimented with psychologically manipulating people using human scents.
Just when you might start wondering why this series is being presented as an extension of Suskind's work, the trailer directly references his novel. A character pulls a book out from under a bed as dialogue tells us, "It's the story of that Grenouille guy who created a perfume from women he murdered." So it sounds like this Perfume exists in a world where the events of Suskind's Perfume actually happened.
It's an odd and unexpected approach, but I can go along with it.
Directed by Philipp Kadelbach, the Perfume series will be available for viewing on Netflix as of December 21st.