Decalogue

Any thriller brazen enough to preface its story with Ronald Knox’s classic 1929 “Decalogue” — otherwise known as the “Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction”— runs the risk of being too clever by half.

That’s a story that may not require a show that runs about as long as Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Ten Commandments parable, “The Decalogue.”

The fears of the Decalogue’s defenders are not misplaced: Syria is the loose tip of a dangling thread.

An artist as imaginative as Toles can certainly get plenty of creative mileage out of this repellent character trait without doing violence to the Decalogue.

The paradox of this is that Pastis is really meant for those nights when you decide to cancel your reservations at the little nine-seat tasting counter where the menu is inspired by Kieslowski’s “Decalogue.”