Netflix in Belgium only has the Pink Panther 2, but not the first movie. do I need to have seen the first movie to understand the important bits about the second?

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    Are you talking about the original 1960s series of films, starring Peter Sellers? Or the newer series starring Steve Martin? – Steve-O Dec 9 '16 at 22:28

Assuming you are talking about the series of movies from the 1960's and 70's, then no.

I saw all the movies of the series when I was a kid, except the first (self-titled) one. I didn't see that one until I was an adult, and was actually a bit underwhelmed.

The first movie is actually a fair bit different from the rest, in that the main character of the series is just a supporting character in The Pink Panther. I'm guessing they realized Peter Sellers' character was the best thing in that movie, so they just made more movies centered around that character.

If you are instead talking about the later movies from 2006 and 2009 starring Steve Martin, I'd suggest not watching those at all. Failing that, you shouldn't watch them without watching some of the original series first, so you know what they are trying to do. But if you insist, I highly doubt there's anything going on in the second (2009) that you'd need the first (2006) to understand, so no again*.

As a good rule of thumb, I'd suggest you don't bother with any Pink Panther movie that doesn't have Peter Sellers in it.

* - You will probably want to see an earlier Sellers movie in the series afterwards though, to understand why that was supposed to be funny.

  • ah, I didn't know there were 2 generations of these movies, and apparently, the movie from Netflix is the 2009 one, which is not the one I'm interested in either. – Nzall Dec 10 '16 at 8:45
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    Agreed, the first movie is almost irrelevant to the whole series [& the Steve Martin ones need to be forgotten entirely] - A Shot in the Dark is the first one you need to see - though they're all rather episodic anyway, so it's not vital to see all in order, except really for the total mental collapse of Herbert Lom's Charles Dreyfus character. – Tetsujin Dec 10 '16 at 9:19

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