History Series / Astrid

* SensoryOverload: [[TruthInTelevision Autistic people often have difficulty with an excess of sensory stimuli.]] Astrid routinely wears construction-grade hearing protection when she has to go out on the city streets, and gets sent into a full-blown meltdown in "The Haunting" when a careless remark about the BodyOfTheWeek's very public death during opening statements of a big trial causes her to be swarmed by reporters.

** Astrid's mother abandonned her when she was an infant; when they meet again in season 1, no one knows who she is at first.
** In season 3, Astrid finds out that Anne, her tutor at the police academy, was actually her late father's girlfriend for several years before he died - he never mentionned her to his daughter because he did not want to cause her distress, but they were building up to introducing the two when he died. The reason for that was that Anne was pregnant, and Astrid has a young half-brother.

* WorthlessYellowRocks: In the episode "Fulcanelli", the alchemists' hidden treasure that the killer was interested in turns out to be [[spoiler:a recipe for phosphorus. Valuable hundreds of years ago, but much more common now]].

* NoBadgeNoProblem: ZigZagged. Astrid is an AmateurSleuth whose day job is handling documents at the Criminal Records building, but regularly examines crime scenes and sometimes even interviews witnesses (though this is rare because her challenges with social cues make this difficult). Up until the season 2 finale, this is largely let slide because she's so helpful, but then her attempt to [[ClearTheirName clear the name of an innocent woman]] turns into a HostageSituation that [[spoiler:ends with Raph getting shot in the shoulder trying to protect the real killer from the hostage-taker]], leading to her getting banned from taking part in any further investigations. However, in the season 3 premiere, she manages to impress the Prefect of Police when she helps resolve a murder case that turned political. The Prefect overturns her firing, but only on condition that Astrid attend and pass police academy within the year. [[spoiler:She does, almost by accident, because she walked out of the oral exam after having an EurekaMoment in the case, but her willingness to prioritize solving the case over keeping her job impressed the examiners and they passed her, and is given the rank of lieutenant in the judicial police, ending the show's use of the trope altogether.]]

** "Unlocked Room": Characters are named after those in ''Series/{{House}}'' -- Foreman, Cuddy and Lemaison ("House").

* ImportantHaircut: Raph cutting her hair in season 4 isnt that big a deal, but it is to Astrid, who struggles a lot with change.

* MockGuffin: In "Fulcanelli", the secret treasure of the alchemist Fulcanelli, which at least two murders have been committed for, is [[spoiler:a chemical recipe to prepare elemental phosphorus]], which [[ScienceMarchesOn is no longer very special]].

* ConspiracyTheory: "Global Plan" centres around the murder of an astronomer whose discovery of a secret satellite aroused conspiracy theories. The conspiracy film-makers are depicted as con artists who rely on ManipulativeEditing, and [[spoiler:the murder turns out to be because of sexual jealousy over one of them having sex with the astronomer.]]

* BluntMetaphorsTrauma:
** Astrid is a bit LiteralMinded and often has trouble with figurative language, one of the worst cases being a near-meltdown after Raph texts her to "drop everything" when the BodyOfTheWeek drops in the middle of Astrid's weekly grocery shopping trip, disrupting her routine. After a couple of such miscommunications, Raph learns to tell Astrid much more precisely what she needs from her.
** At one point in "Global Plan", Raph mentions something about the police having been given orders "from above" (meaning from the national government). Astrid's immediate reaction to this is to look straight up at the ceiling.

* BluntMetaphorsTrauma: Astrid is a bit LiteralMinded and often has trouble with figurative language, one of the worst cases being a near-meltdown after Raph texts her to "drop everything" when the BodyOfTheWeek drops in the middle of Astrid's weekly grocery shopping trip, disrupting her routine. After a couple of such miscommunications, Raph learns to tell Astrid much more precisely what she needs from her.

** Raphaëlle's past isn't as bad, but she has a strained relationship with her father, a senior lawyer who she fears she disappointed, a sister who she dislikes and views as shallow and selfish, and a junkie brother who died young due to his addiction.

** The haunted house in the second episode ''could'' just be a creaky old house with an ergot fungus problem. But even Astrid is open to the idea that it could really be haunted by the ghost of a murdered chambermaid (at least, to the extent that she doesn't think that there's sufficient evidence either to believe in or disbelieve in ghosts). Then, in the final shot, we see the deserted house from outside at night, and the candelabra-carrying ghost Raphaelle saw moves through an upper floor.

* NewOldFlame: In the second season, Raphaëlle rekindles her affair with Mathias Forest, a public prosecutor who she used to date when they were both in law school.

* ParentalAbandonment: Astrid's mother Mathilde left when Astrid was an infant, after she was diagnosed: it's revealed that a sexist psychiatrist unsubtly blamed her for Astrid's ASD[[note]]French psychiatry has a reputation for dealing with autism badly, due to stubbornly holding on to psychoanalytic theories that autism was caused by a lack of parental affection long after they were abandoned elsewhere[[/note]], and also that [[DarkAndTroubledPast Mathilde herself had an autistic younger brother whom her mother murdered]] and she feared she might do the same to her own child. Her father did his best to raise her properly by himself, but died in the line of duty a few years back.

* RailEnthusiast: William, the leader of Astrid's support group, is a railway enthusiast with a particular love of the État 231G class Pacific, and the first time he uses his computer skills to help with a case, Raphaelle rewards him with tickets for a heritage train excursion.

* RedOniBlueOni: Raphaelle's "red" warmth, emotionality, and disorganisation are contrasted with the "blue" ultra-controlled Astrid.

* WillTheyOrWontThey: Raphaelle and Nicolas, who are blatantly in love but afraid to ruin their many years of friendship.

* DisabilityImmunity: [[spoiler:The killer in "Invisible" has [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypohidrotic_ectodermal_dysplasia hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia]], which means that he has no hair anywhere on his body and no sweat glands, so he leaves very few forensic traces behind him.]]

** In the later seasons, at William's suggestion, Astrid keeps dried beans in her pockets and moves them from one side of her body to another as a way of keeping track of how much strain she's under and avoiding meltdowns, a literalisation of "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory spoon theory]]" in English-speaking disability culture.

* DaddysGirl: Astrid was raised by her single father, a DotingParent who struggled but more often than not managed to make the best of a complicated situation. Astrid was a wreck when he died and still keeps his bedroom untouched in her apartment.

* DaChief: Astrid's boss Commissaire Bachert.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Astrid's mother disappeared when she was too young to remember her, and she was hounded out of public school by ableist bullying from virtually her entire class, and is fearful of mental hospitals due to an early misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and multiple authority figures insisting she be institutionalized. Her father is portrayed more sympathetically in {{flashback}}s and got her the job at Criminal Records, but he's still shown making a number of (well-intentioned) errors in raising her.

** The title of "The Fermi Paradox", which involves a murder associated with apparent UFO phenomena, refers to the real-world question of "if life is common in the universe, why have we never seen any unambiguous evidence of it outside Earth?".

* GentlemanThief: The title character in "The Starling" is a wealthy lawyer, who is secretly a burglar who pulls off spectacular heists without any violence.