Is France ignoring the history of its series? Screenwriters and directors sound the alarm

Some two hundred directors and screenwriters of series and singles publish an open letter to request the creation of a platform dedicated to television works.

Vt has been around twenty years since French series emerged from their torpor thanks to works like Gears, A French Village or Kaamelott. Ultra popular comedies (Ten percent, HPIetc.) into critically acclaimed dramas (The Returned, Sambre, Hippocratesetc.), they build their modern history, are rewarded and adapted throughout the world – The Agencythe American version of Legends Officebegins next Friday in the USA. For them to fully establish themselves as an artistic form recognized by all, we cannot ignore their origins. We need to know their past, revisit the works that have marked the history of the French small screen, be aware of the roots of our series and their evolution.

Two hundred and six screenwriters and directors have published an open letter to this effect demanding the creation of a streaming platform dedicated to French television works from the last forty years. “ We deplore that access to a heritage rich in several thousand hours is refused to citizens. Even though these works all benefited from public aid provided by the CNC and a large part of them were also financed by the public service through royalties », Write the signatories, including Anne Landois, ex showrunner d’GearsFrédéric Krivine, co-creator ofA French VillageMarc Herpoux, co-writer of Sambreor even Rodolphe Tissot, main director of So let them be.

In fact, access to our series and singles (what we used to call “telefilms”) has improved in recent years, thanks to broadcaster platforms (France.tv, TF1+, MyCanal etc.) and streamers foreigners like Netflix and Prime Video, which buy or co-finance certain projects and offer recent big hits – for example, Don't do this, don't do that is on Disney+, Ten percent on Netflix, etc. Salto, a project common to the large free channels which could have responded to this demand, disappeared in 2023 due to lack of audience. In 2020, the INA also filled a considerable void by launching Madelen, a platform where you can see many series from the 1950s to today, including “classics” like The Island of Thirty Coffins, The Tiger Brigades, The darling Saints or Coffee break.

For the signatories of this open letter, this is clearly insufficient. They speak of a “ black hole in which part of our cultural and audiovisual heritage is currently buried » and, if no platform allowing broad access to units and series made in France is not created, from a “ guilty renunciation [des] professionals, public authorities and political leaders “. Being able to review, on a single platform, hundreds of works from the recent history of French television would certainly be instructive for remembering what our screenwriters, directors and producers were able to offer, for the better… and for the worse, with the low point of the 1980s-1990s, the reign of sitcoms from AB Productions (Hello Muscles, Helene and the boys, etc.) and formatted 90-minute thrillers. It would also be important so that our television fiction does not suffer from amnesia and continues to move forward.