Mechanics Of Crime

Belgium has produced some of Europe's most disturbing criminal cases. Mechanics of Crime returns to them, not to sensationalise, but to understand.

Each episode examines a landmark Belgian judicial case, from serial killings to infanticide to mass shootings, drawing on archives and contemporary analysis to ask a harder question than who did it: what conditions made it possible? The series works backwards through the evidence, bringing fresh perspectives to cases that once gripped the country, and in some instances revealing how the assumptions of the time shaped both the investigation and the verdict.

What drives the series is a clear conviction: that revisiting extreme crimes carefully, and honestly, can help prevent future ones. This is true crime as social inquiry. The focus is not on horror but on the familial, psychological, and institutional failures that enable violence to take root.

Produced by RTBF and Triangle7, the series now runs to three seasons, with the most recent produced in 2025. Its approach is rigorous and its tone restrained, carried by authoritative narration and structured investigative storytelling. For broadcasters and platforms with an appetite for European true crime that takes its subject seriously, Mechanics of Crime offers both strong narrative pull and genuine substance.