Louis de Funes & his LE GENDARME movies: to Russia and loved

Cinematic comedians who've made a career out of playing halfwits have an uncanny knack for crossing national boundaries to find love and admiration in the most unlikely places - places where they can't even be understood in their own voice for heaven's sake. 
American Jerry Lewis is a god in France, Briton Norman Wisdom is revered in Albania, while Frenchman Louis de Funes is a perennial favourite on Russian tv.

His series of Le Gendarme comedies in the 60s and 70s made him at one point France's favourite actor but it's difficult now to discern exactly what it was about these films that so charmed the French - who could understand what he was saying - let alone what it is that continues to entice the Russians, who can only appreciate him in dubbed form.
In six films between 1964 and 1982 he played Marechal des Logis-chef Ludovic Cruchot, a sergeant in the Gendarmerie Nationale, based in St Tropez on the French Riviera. Cruchot alternated between toadying obsequiousness towards his slightly dimwitted boss and abrasively insulting the 3 or 4 police officers under his command, while dragging all of them into all manner of foolish escapades.
LE GENDARME A NEW YORK (1965) saw him let loose in the Big Apple, ostensibly to attend an international conference of police officers, while 1978's LE GENDARME ET LES EXTRA-TERRESTRES found him back in St Tropez tackling space aliens with the unnerving ability to take on the form of his fellow officers. Both films feature an awful lot of shouting, exasperation, and running around by de Funes which he, French and Russian audiences clearly mistook for comedy.
It isn't.
It's just a balding man in a Gendarme uniform shouting, getting exasperated and running around a lot. The attempts at humour are unerringly infantile, and I don't mean that in a good way. de Funes in action is like watching someone with no sense of humour trying to replicate the sight gags and situations they've seen in a Laurel and Hardy short. There's a fine art to idiocy and where Stan Laurel created classic routines using a fine-tipped paint brush, de Funes attempts the same with a yard broom.
The result is clumsy, tiresome and unamusing. 
I don't resent the chunk of my New Year I gave up to watch these films. It's added to the sum of my cinematic knowledge and - just like when I had my wisdom teeth extracted - it's an experience I'll never have to go through again.