The Extraordinary Cases of Marta season 3: Czech comedy review

The third season of the Czech series “The Extraordinary Cases of Marta” (Případy mimořádné Marty) is available in the Oneplay library, and from Sunday evening it is also airing on TV Nova. It is still not a classic detective story but a wacky crime comedy that runs on the energy of Tatiana Dyková and the directorial ideas of Marek Najbrt and Tomáš Pavlíček.

The heroine, Marta Adamcová, has kept her extraordinary abilities but no longer uses them as a police consultant. After a conflict with her boss, whom she calls Superpolda, Marta has left her not quite ordinary job and works part-time as a cleaner. Crimes seem to be drawn to her: while cleaning a luxurious house, she ends up next to a murder, so unluckily that she lands in prison herself.

Comedy, not realism

The series is based on a French original and was never a serious crime drama. The creators and the screenwriters do not pretend to be anywhere near reality. The episode in which Marta sits in prison on suspicion of murder but keeps investigating from there cares little about how real Czech prisons work, whether it is the relations between inmates or mobile phones. Against that backdrop, the comedy Oddělení B looks like the pinnacle of realism.

It is light entertainment, but it feels more energetic than routine, which is where seriously stylized Czech detective shows often end up. Marta is sure to irritate fans of procedural crime dramas, just as she irritates the people around her in the series. She is scatterbrained, sharp-tongued, rough around the edges, tastelessly dressed and unbearable, yet partly a genius and, on top of that, a mother of three. She is the complete opposite of the lone detective with whom viewers so readily identify.

What's new in season 3

Screenwriter Zdeněk Jecelín, who worked on previous seasons, is joined by two new co-writers, Aneta Sláma Honzková and Helena Koblížková. The season is even wilder than the previous ones, with more purely comedic situations and visual gags. The creators break the “fourth wall” and let characters appear in explanatory inserts or meet in one room where they clearly are not together in reality.

The third episode touches on the subject of sexual violence. It gets little space, but it resonates, partly because it is delivered through a rap song convincingly performed by Jasmin Jana Grünerová under the name Jasmin.

Not all the jokes land, the stylization sometimes goes too far, and Marta's excessive behavior looks forced. The sparring with her boss, played by Roman Zach, wears thin easily. The team dynamic is enriched this time by a newcomer, Vojta, who wants to follow the rules more strictly than the others yet does not turn into a bore, even though his colleagues tease him at first. The series is held together not by conflicts within the team but by the fact that the characters are fond of each other deep down.

In her investigation, Marta this time uses her knowledge of strange diseases of Siamese cats and of the nesting habits of songbirds. Many other Czech detective shows would pay dearly for such a detail. Marta remembers literally everything, and unusual details are born from that.

Marta and Sherlock

The heroine is partly reminiscent of a variation on the sociopathic genius Sherlock Holmes from the BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch. But he, with all his eccentricity, was an audience favorite, whereas viewers will not accept Marta so easily: she is not a brilliant cynic but a rough-edged woman whose genius no one seems willing to acknowledge. There the comparison ends: as a detective story the series is nowhere near Sherlock; it is first and foremost a comedy, admittedly a little mad, but made by Marek Najbrt and Tomáš Pavlíček with love.

Series: “The Extraordinary Cases of Marta III”, comedy and crime, Czechia, 2026, 8 episodes. Cast: Tatiana Dyková, Roman Zach, Anita Krausová, Bolek Polívka, Jiří Špišák, Taňa Malíková, Jana Plodková, Matěj Hádek and others. Available on Oneplay and TV Nova.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz