This French TV serial comprising 6 x 52 minute episodes is currently available on ‘Walter Presents’, the All4 strand offering foreign language drama in the UK. Set in 1962, this has predictably attracted some Mad Men references in the UK because it is set in the 1960s with close attention to period detail. It does have some Anglo-American TV references but I think it might be a little difficult for some UK audiences to read since it is set in the context of French politics in the early 1960s, a period of great turbulence and no little danger.
The ‘speakerine’ of the title is Christine Beauval (Marie Gillain), the principal ‘announcer’ on RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française) the French public broadcasting organisation which in 1962 operated only one TV channel and four radio stations. TV broadcasting took much longer to develop in most of Europe compared to the UK and North America and Christine is more like the female presenters on UK TV in the early 1950s who added some glamour and personality to programming while imparting information about the days limited programming. RTF was a ‘PSB’ but unlike the BBC it was much more directly controlled by the French government and therefore a target for political activists. 1962 was a particularly difficult period for the new 5th Republic after President de Gaulle recognised the independence of Algeria, signing the Évian Accords in March 1962 with full independence being declared on July 3rd 1962. There was fierce resistance to de Gaulle’s action from the OAS – the paramilitary organisation set up by ex-soldiers who had fought against the FLN (the Algerian independence movement) as well as pieds noirs (Algerian-born French) and assorted fascists. Several attempts were made to assassinate de Gaulle, one of which formed the basis for Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 thriller ‘The Day of the Jackal’, adapted as a successful film in 1973.
The third political force in France at the time was the French communist party (PCF). In this serial, the management of RTF is associated with control by the Gaullist government. The only communist I’ve come across so far is a journalist at RTF who is clearly sympathetic to the unions in the building. Christine Beauval is married to Pierre (Guillaume de Tonquédec) who is Head of Information at RTF and therefore technically his wife’s line boss. However, the head of the TV channel overall, Darnet, is an enemy of Beauval and is competing with him to head a new venture, ‘Mondovision’. This refers to a broadcast link with the United States via the new Telstar satellites, the first of which was launched in 1962. The satellites enabled live TV links between the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Canada. The series shows US personnel arriving in Paris and this was high level stuff having implications for NATO and in particular the rather different ideas of the French and British governments towards the alliance. The BBC were in charge of co-ordinating the transmissions.
This is the background but the initial focus is on a disturbing series of events featuring the Beauval family. Christine, as the most familiar face of RTF programming with a large fan base, has received threatening letters and has been subject to quite frightening ‘stunts’/’accidents’. Her 18 year-old daughter Colette has got involved with an older man, a politician (the Minister for Information played by Grégory Fitoussi), and finds herself in a difficult situation when she joins a schoolfriend to go to a party which turns out to be not what she expected at all and puts her in a very dangerous situation. Meanwhile her older brother, whose parents managed to prevent from serving in the army in Algeria, has become interested in supporting the OAS because he has friends who have ‘disappeared’ while on military service.
This series of events (and more I haven’t spoiled) has happened by midway through the second episode and I’m hooked. We seem to be in a crime thriller and political intrigue all worked through a family melodrama and one of the darkest moments of French post-war history. Some 2,000 or more people were killed in attacks on Maghrebi people, representatives of the state/public sector and indeed anyone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, by the OAS. This mix is reminiscent of the three series of Forbrydelsen/The Killing (Denmark-Sweden 2007-12). It is also reminiscent, in a different way, of the recent UK drama serial The Trial of Christine Keeler (UK 2019). The early 1960s saw a series of sex scandals in British politics. The final ingredient in this already potent mixture is the issue of women working in the TV industry and the sexism they face. Just as Christine is looking to move into a form of broadcast journalism at RTF, a new threat to her position appears in the form of a young ‘pretender’ to her role as an announcer. Isabelle (Barbara Probst) claims to be 23 and she is what the older men in charge at RTF think of as a ‘looker’. She is also very bright and highly skilled at deception. What is she up to?
From what I’ve seen so far, this is a polished production by France Télévisions (RTF’s PSB successor) with a standout performance by Marie Gillain and good use of locations and period detail. The French New Wave films in the early 1960s were later accused of avoiding many of the political issues of the period (much as RTF in this series avoids ‘unpleasant’ news stories) but I was pleased to get a sense of various French film genres in this serial. There are certainly strong indicators of the crime and political thriller films in this production. When I looked up Marie Gillain I realised I had seen her as one of the SOE resistance fighters in Les femmes de l’ombre (Female Agents, France 2008).
Since I started this posting, I’ve watched two more episodes and therefore four out of the six episodes and the serial is holding up well. I now see that because Christine is the central figure, the position of women in France in the early 1960s is becoming increasingly central. The series is written by a large team of four men and three women and directed by Laurent Tuel. I recommend the serial but I’m struggling with All4’s use of adverts, seemingly thrown across each episode almost randomly, presumably to persuade us to have them removed for a monthly fee. This isn’t the way to go about building your audience Channel 4!
I couldn’t find a subtitled clip, but here is a French trailer without subs, giving a good idea of the serial in visual terms:
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