France flocks back to good old days on TV

After camembert and the decision to redraw the map of champagne country, it is time to take a look at another  highly successful celebration of France's terroir, or its rich rural roots.

What does it take for a television network to beat a big football match in prime time ? Manchester United was knocking Olympique Lyonnais, France's top side, out of the European Champions' League the other night, but the French preferred to watch a yarn about a bigoted 19th century widow and her search for virtue.

Seven million people tuned in to the episode from Chez Maupassant, a costume drama that has pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of drawing a mass audience to high-quality television. At the start of its second season, the setting of Victorian-era short stories by Guy de Maupassant, is such a hit that President Sarkozy is using it as an argument to convince broadcasting bosses that the French will watch high-brow television if they do it right (Unfamiliar with modern Britain, he usually cites UK television as his model).

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France 2 television, the main state channel, was experimenting last year when it threw Maupassant into the mix of police dramas and reality and quiz shows that rule the mid-evening here like most places. The eight-part series, set in Normandy and Paris and rigorously faithful to the original stories, was a throwback to old-fashioned television that France gave up in the 1980s and which it associates with the BBC.

Thanks to astute casting, with celebrity directors and some big stars, the cruel but comic tales of ambition, greed and misfortune in 19th century Normandy touched a nerve and knocked CSI and the other rival Tuesday night shows off their perch. [ndlr pour francophones: CSI= Les Experts]

Petit Fût (Little cask), one of this week's two stories, was staged by Claude Chabrol, the great movie director (Never heard of him, my young London colleagues told me today so here he is). It starred François Berléand, a much-loved film and television actor, as an inn-keeper who encourages a greedy old farm owner to drink herself to death on calvados so he can inherit. [picture below]

Credit is being given to the timeless pull of Maupassant, one of the fathers of the gripping short story and a longtime favourite for Hollywood and other film-makers. Among many Maupassant films, John Ford's 1939 classic Stagecoach, starring John Wayne, was based on Maupassant's Boule de Suif although they hid its arty origin at the time.

Praise is also going to Gérard Jourd'hui, the producer, who went back to basics. With 35 mm film rather than video and impeccable staging, he has created a bygone Normandy of peasants and merchants in which you can almost taste the cider. They have maintained continuity through different directors and cast by using the same directors of photography and costumes. One of the rules is all music must come from the era, the soundtrack is Saint-Saens, Chopin and so on.      

The show has tapped into France's yearning for its rural roots, Jourd'hui told us today. "France is a country that is not advancing and which has a nostalgic outlook. It wants to go back to bread that had a flavour and the good things in life," he told Marie Tourres, the French member of our Paris staff, who commutes in every day from her home in Maupassant's Normandy.   

"It is a country that wants to go back to its values and a time ... of its great story-tellers like Emile Zola and Maupassant. He has a humanist vision which does not age. He has a view of this society of aggressive hypocrites that is both tender and very cynical. You cannot watch it without being entertained."

Critics have this month made the same point drawing a parallel between the Maupassant series and the phenemonenal success in the cinema of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, the new comedy about life in the French north that is breaking records. 

Jourd'hui, who has lived part of the time in London for the last 20 years, says that he admires British television for the resources that it deploys on adapting classics. "There is money, know-how and a public for television fiction," he said. "The British offer regular adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, David Copperfield.... There is nothing better than the great texts and in England it is normal to restage them. In France we do not dare. People think that means mouldy and dusty."

France 2 and other networks have more prime-time costume drama in the works, including adaptations of Balzac, Zola and Victor Hugo. In the meantime, a couple of sports experts wrote in Libération  today that France's First Division football clubs would get their audience back from Maupassant if they injected a little more drama. "Football must be played according to the rules of storytelling, with a quality show," they said.

[Both pictures from this week's episodes. Top: wedding scene from au Champs, a dark tale about a poor family who give their son to a Parisian bouegeois family. Below: Berleand and Tsilla Chelton in Petit Fût]

   

Comments

[Joan Arles]

Chez Maupassant is great television. The stories are incredibly faithful to the original. I love the Normandy patois that they do so well. Berléand was talking it in Petit Fût this week. It's not so far from the ch'ti that Dany Boon has made so much of. It makes a nice change from the southern twang that I live with.

[Daisy]

I guess the French are tired of 21st century bling bling :)

[Donald]

Chez Maupassant is wonderfully done. The period pieces and staging is superb. It's up there in quality with the brilliant BBC adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes series staring Jeremy Brett.

[dot king]

Recently, France 2 showed live from the theatre, a Sacha Guitry play with François Berléand, Pierre Arditti and Michèle Larroque - it was quite simply excellent.
It's to be hoped that a new era is dawning in French TV, it's certainly needed.
The Maupassant dramatisations have been excellent too. Last season, and this up to now. Casting, costumes, settings, Maupassant's dark humour, all beautifully captured and brought to life.
Is it my imagination, or has the quality improved since the arrival of Patrick de Carolis at the head of France 2 and 3?

[christopher muir]

My first real encounter with Maupassant was in Melbourne, Australia. As a student in the late forties, I came across his Bel Ami (1885) on a high shelf in the then wonderful city public library. A tale of of the of the pleasures and pitfalls facing those choosing journalism as a vocation, I have always regarded it as a very important work of fiction. I hope that France 2 episodes find their way on to DVD.

[dot king]

Christopher Muir - I couldn't agree more about "Bel Ami" - it's one of my favourite books. The description of the arrival in Rouen once caused me to make a considerable detour just to visit the town.
I don't know whether you are British, or from some other anglophone country, but if you aren't British, you might not know that the BBC serialised "Bel Ami" -years ago - in English of course, but I still found it a better telling of the story than the recent French version, which I thought didn't delve deeply enough into the character of "Bel Ami". Two episodes don't give enough scope, I think.
If you can get hold of the BBC serialised version, you might find it more satisfying - I wonder if it's available? Wouldn't mind it myself. "Bel Ami" is one of the few books I've read more than once.

[David Powell]

You write Charles, "a costume drama that has pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of drawing a mass audience to high-quality television."

Well, I disagree that it is an "impossible feat"

High quality television, no matter what type will always draw a big audience.

The Sopranos, Bleak House, Pride and Prejudice, almost anything by David Attenborough, Prime Suspect and yes, Coronation Street.

The problem is cost. It costs a lot more to produce and sometimes it seems that accountants work out "This type of TV gets more viewers per pound spent than that type so this type is better."

These days it appears that accountants rule the world.

It used to be they kept the score.

Could you start a movement to keep them in their proper place?

[dot king]

"a costume drama that has pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of drawing a mass audience to high-quality television." (CB article)

Well, I disagree that it is an "impossible feat"
(David POWELL)

Ah, but not in France unfortunately. Here it's "audimat rules OK" - if you want an evening's telly in France you usually have to choose between "the same" and another version, or repeat of "the same".
France TV has a tendency to play to the lowest common denominator. And once you've achieved "they don't expect anything else, therefore they won't accept anything else" the battle is almost lost.
It's encouraging to see that peak viewing hours can attract mass audiences to unexpected, well-produced pogrammes. My fingers are crossed. Long may it continue.

BTW - the Beeb's version of "Bel Ami" doesn't seem to be available - when I googled it I got a selection of soft porn films!