New French political series broadcast on France 2, “In the Shadow” takes us behind the scenes of access to power like other American fictions before it.
Broadcast on France 2, In the Shadow is a gripping and relentless political series not to be missed. This fiction in six 52-minute episodes tells the story behind the scenes of a presidential election through the eyes of César Casalonga (Swann Arlaud), political advisor.
The latter works for Paul Francoeur (Melvil Poupaud), former Minister of Justice and candidate for the presidency of the Republic, in a wheelchair following a road accident.
César's “boss” has just won his party's primaries against his opponent Marie-France Trémeau (Karin Viard) and he is starting a presidential campaign which promises to be eventful. Caesar must then dodge the attacks of other candidates and extinguish the resentment of his own political family.
But when a suspicion of electronic voting fraud during the primaries threatens to weaken his boss's candidacy, César understands that he will have to lead the most difficult fight of his life.
Between realism and fiction, a series under American influence
If the series seems realistic to you, you should remember that it is freely adapted from a novel of the same name co-written by Edouard Philippe, former Prime Minister, now mayor of Le Havre, and his former special advisor and MEP Gilles Boyer.
To move from the book published in 2011 to the fiction released this year, the duo surrounded themselves with a team of experienced screenwriters: Lamara LePrêtre-Habib (D'argent et de sang), Cédric Anger (Next time I'll aim for heart) and Pierre Schoeller (The Exercise of the State).
In addition to the technical and human realism of the workings of French politics, In the Shadow also had to be well-crafted entertainment and a gripping thriller. The reference for the team of screenwriters was the cult series À la maison blanche, one of Edouard Philippe's favorite fictions, Pierre Schoeller explained to us:
“It's a model, it's a reference. Firstly by its longevity, by the interaction between American political life and current events. This is the genius of Aaron Sorkin. This series reassures us of the fact that it is possible to create a strong political figure who is not a disappointing figure, who is not a figure of resentment.
It's important to be able to create a figure that we like to look at, that we like to see work and be confronted with others. And we agreed in this sense that we had to have characters that we could respect.
Whether or not we agree with what they say is another matter. But in any case, they had to be made whole. They have their dark side, they have their share of power, they have their share of self-sacrifice, they have their share of errors too.”
© FTV – Deuxiemeligne
For his part, Gilles Boyer confided that the inspirations came from Aaron Sorkin's series “which describes a somewhat dreamy president” to Netflix's popular House of Cards “which conversely describes an unscrupulous president”. The idea was to focus on a happy medium, on “an in-between” :
“What interested us was to explore the areas of ambiguity, the secrets, the unsaid things specific to each person which can explode into broad daylight. The trust we place in ourselves or in each other don't give in. The time it takes to come and the speed with which it unravels, the doubt that sets in in a life's commitment.
These are areas that we found interesting to explore and which are exactly in the middle of the two visions that I described in the series which are both of high quality and very entertaining.
Inspirations from reality
Met during the Séries Mania festival, Karin Viard assured us that she was not inspired by any political figure to embody her character Marie-France Trémeau. Quite simply, because the storyline of the series, relentless and well-documented, was enough for her:
“I am creating a character that I hope is very plausible but who is not real and that is what interested me. She is a character that we talk about a lot, who takes up space even when she is not not in the play I had to give a sufficiently strong image of this unpleasant woman who was ready for anything, as she was written.
It's a series that is extremely real and very well documented. It's not fantasy in fact, everything we see is extremely real. We see to what extent political figures are also the puppets of issues that go beyond them. It’s extremely real and quite captivating.”
© Thibault Grabherr – FTV – Deuxiemeligne
For his part, Melvil Poupaud, who plays Paul Francoeur, did some research of his own for inspiration and looked “speakers, men, speeches, things like that” but he quickly got bored because he couldn't find a figure that matched his character. “The one I wanted to portray, I often found him quite weak, not a very good speaker, not very charismatic”.
He wanted to find his own incarnation and relied on the scenario and the basic material which is the book by Edouard Philippe and Gilles Boyer. He also welcomed the work sessions upstream during the readings with “these two political advisors, screenwriters, who repeated the diction of certain sentences, gave advice on how to behave and really told the story behind the scenes of power”.
Comments collected by Mégane Choquet on March 17, 2024 in Lille during the Séries Mania festival.
The series “Dans l’ombre” is currently being broadcast on France 2. The last two episodes will be broadcast on November 13. The series is available on france.TV.
