M6 – TUESDAY NOVEMBER 12 – 9:10 P.M. – SERIES
Five seasons of Legends Office had made us believe that the art of intelligence supported transparency, that we could dismantle the mechanisms and affects that govern the lives of secret agents, make beautiful stories out of them while being perfectly informed of the reality of the profession.
Four episodes of Spies of Terror bring us back to our senses. This fiction inspired by the investigation of journalist Matthieu Suc (HarperCollins, 2020) is perpetually hampered by reality, that of the work of the French services in the weeks and months which followed the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Saint-Denis and Paris . We must patiently wait until the work of the actors and the direction of Rodolphe Tissot allow him to find a truth other than that of history, that of fiction.
On the program, long meetings at the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE) and the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), other meetings between the two services, which do not have the same priorities. External intelligence wants to eliminate the officers of the Islamic State organization (Daesh), as demanded by political power, while internal intelligence wants to prevent new attacks, even if it means arresting suspects a little too early who could lead to their superiors.
Tedious procedures
To make these often tedious procedures dramatic, even tragic, we must succeed in embodying them. For a long time, the series struggled to find the balance between the constraints of relative respect for the facts and the necessities of dramatic art.
The two major intelligence services are played by women, Malika Berthier (Rachida Brakni) for the DGSE, Lucie Kessler (Fleur Geffrier) for the DGSI. A mother, the soldier is married to a Paris fire doctor who suffers from post-traumatic stress; the policewoman lives an uncertain romance with a colleague from the same department (Pierre Perrier). These notations initially clutter the story, appearing as forced detours, taken to affirm the humanity of people responsible for inhumane tasks.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers “The Bureau of Legends”, provider of recruits for French intelligence
Read later
We must take a detour to Lille, where Major Vincent Morin (Vincent Elbaz) monitors the jihadist movement. There, he recruits Saïd (Rachid Guellaz), who claims to be able to provide information in exchange for help repatriating his younger brother engaged in the ranks of the Islamic State. Measuring very precisely the motivations of his character (social recognition, profit, family solidarity, civic-mindedness), Rachid Guellaz draws this whole aspect of the story upwards.
You have 24.61% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
