Engrenages (Spiral) - Season 5 will be filmed in 2013

We won't have to wait until September 2014 to see season 5 (12 episodes) of Engrenages. Indeed, the writers started writing this new season in March, during the filming of season 4 (which ended last June).

Anne Landois (on the right on the photo below, next to Brannon Braga and Caroline Proust), head writer of seasons 3 & 4, will still be in charge of defining the major plotlines and arcs for this upcoming season centered on informants, with a background story inspired by the Neyret affair (a top commissioner at the judicial police who gave information to notorious international drug dealers). That's all we know — I assume Laure and her team have a snitch allowing them to find out about an influential figure dealing with gangsters.

And last month, Anne Landois declared to Le Nouvel Observateur that "we had received a special request from the channel, telling us to speed up the writing process", in order to film season 5 before 2014, so that there's no 2-year gap between seasons this time — it was even 27 months between season 3 (May 3-June 7, 2010) and season 4 (September 3-October 8, 2012).

She also hinted that this time, "we decided to have a story that would regroup all our characters around a single case, on the opposite of season 4 during which they were mostly following personal storylines".

However, she will have to write season 5 without Eric de Barahir. "De Barahir" is an alias, this man is actually working as a police commissioner while being a consultant (season 2) and a writer (seasons 3 & 4) on the show. But he wanted to go back on the field so he won't be involved with season 5. However, there are still many consultants (helping, not writing scripts) : 2 judges, 2 lawyers and 3 cops. And Simon Jabonka, writer of season 2 of Flics (the other Olivier Marchal series besides Braquo), who co-wrote episodes 3.09 to 3.12 of Engrenages, will work at full time on season 5.

With this will of Canal+ to accelerate the production process with the writing starting during the shooting of the previous season + a note telling the writers to speed up, perhaps season 5 will bow early 2014.

As a reminder, the first three seasons (28 episodes) of Engrenages (AKA Spiral) are available on Netflix (French with English subtitles), and season 4 (12 episodes) is coming up soon, I'm sure.

Source.