FRANCE 2 – TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8 – DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Wearing casual clothes, a jacket and a dark T-shirt, Tomer Sisley follows with his gaze the man with long hair and fiery eyes who, in Reims, undresses before diving naked like a worm into a large pool. Clovis, the first Christian king, is baptized and Sisley, among characters dressed in period costumes, tells us his story.
In other episodes of this docu-fiction series titled Our history of France and adapted from a Danish format (Danish historian) broadcast in 2017 with Lars Mikkelsen in the role of star narrator, Tomer Sisley will rub shoulders with illustrious characters: Vercingetorix and Clovis, on Tuesday, October 8, Saint Louis and Charlemagne, on Tuesday, October 15 and, finally, Joan of Arc and Enrique. IV, October 22.
Two episodes of about fifty minutes are broadcast per night, to try to better understand these events that, over more than sixteen centuries, have built France. IHistory of France by Jules Michelet, best seller of the 19th centurymy century, reworked by the public audiovisual service in the 21stmy century. Where do we come from? What is our common past? How do we become what we are? The project is ambitious, the final result mixed.
educational maps
The costume reconstruction scenes, the fights, the intrigues are not ridiculous, but it lacks air, probably also a bit of resources. The characters have difficulty freeing themselves from the “television drama” effect, but Tomer Sisley, as a sympathetic and somewhat anachronistic narrator, comes out of it with flying colors.
The one who incarnated long winch in film and numerous leading roles in successful television series such as Balthazar in TF1, Vortex in France 2, The Commune on Canal+, to name just a few, he assumes with some ease this role of narrator immersed in the past. Clear diction, anecdotes, put into perspective, the actor is helped in his task with clarifying testimonies from historians and also with didactic maps, well prepared and easily understandable.
In the Danish show that inspired this French adaptation, the absence of many important historical figures forced the episodes to cover broad periods: the Stone Age, the Metal Age, the Viking Age, the Early Middle Ages, and the end of the Middle Ages (1350). -1526).
This French version, by choosing to focus each episode on an emblematic character, limits its scope and allows itself to be dragged into a kind of national poor man’s novel. How does Vercingetorix “make a nation”? We will know a little more by watching the episode. But the final result leaves a taste of very little.
Our history of Francedocumentary-fiction series written and directed by Frédéric Martin, with Tomer Sisley as narrator (Fr., 2024, 6 x 50 min).
