Tomer Sisley, telegenic history teacher

France 2 – TUESDAY OCTOBER 8 – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

In a casual outfit, jacket and dark t-shirt, Tomer Sisley follows with his eyes the long-haired man with 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 in period outfits, tells us his story.

In other episodes of this docu-fiction series titled Our History of France and adapted from a Danish format (The history of Denmark) broadcast in 2017 with Lars Mikkelsen in the role of star storyteller, Tomer Sisley will rub shoulders with illustrious characters: Vercingétorix and Clovis, Tuesday October 8, Saint-Louis and Charlemagne, Tuesday October 15, and, finally, Joan of Arc and Henri IV, October 22.

Two episodes of around fifty minutes broadcast per evening, to try to better understand these events which, over more than sixteen centuries, have built France. L’History of France by Jules Michelet, 19th century bestseller^e century, reworked by the public audiovisual service in the 21st^e century. Where do we come from? What is our common past? How did we become what we are? The project is ambitious, the final result mixed.

Didactic maps

The costume reconstruction scenes, the fights, the intrigues are not ridiculous, but it lacks a breath, probably a little bit of resources as well. The characters have difficulty freeing themselves from the “TV drama” effect but Tomer Sisley, as a nice and slightly anachronistic storyteller, comes out of it honorably.

The one who embodied Largo Winch in the cinema and numerous title roles in successful television series such as Balthazar on TF1, Vortex on France 2, The Commune on Canal+, to name but a few, takes on this role of storyteller immersed in the past with a certain ease. Clear diction, anecdotes, put into perspective, the actor is helped in his task by the enlightening testimonies of historians and also didactic maps that are well produced and easily understandable.

In the Danish program which inspired this French adaptation, the absence of many major historical figures forced the episodes to cover vast periods: the Stone Age, the Metal Age, the Viking Age, the High 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 drawn into a sort of national poor man’s novel. How does Vercingétorix “make a nation”? We’ll know a little more by watching the episode. But the end result leaves a taste of too little.