Tuesday November 12, M6 offers the first two episodes of Spies of terror, a very successful miniseries available on M6+ which brilliantly traces the hunt for the sponsors of the November 13 attacks until the elimination of the mastermind of the operation, a year later in Syria. Unlike the movie November, which recounts the few days following the attacks, the M6 series focuses on the in-depth investigation carried out by the French security and intelligence services and shows all the complexity of the fight against terrorism. Dense but captivating!
The Spies of Terror: Who are the characters based on?
Inspired by the eponymous book by journalist Mathieu Suc, the M6 series focuses on a little-known part of history. One of the main difficulties was to summarize such an investigation to tell it in four episodes (the next two will be broadcast next Tuesday). All while reflecting the complexity of relationships between services and the scale of the fight against terrorism. To do this, we had to synthesize certain things, starting with the temporality of course but also the characters. “We respected the chronology of events but obviously made jumps in time, sometimes by two months, because there were too many things, says Franck Philippon, the creator of the series met before the launch. Speaking of the characters, in the services, there are hundreds of agents but there too we were forced to condense. It's like Maya in Zero Dark Thirty, our characters are a condensation of several people. This is really the problem of fiction in such a complex reality, is that there are a hundred times more agents than what is obviously shown, he continues. When our characters are at the heart of an action, in reality, there are twenty people. Alex and Lucy [les personnages incarnés par Pierre Perrier et Fleur Geffrier, ndlr] Together they symbolize almost one service each, the intelligence component for Pierre, and the judicial component for Fleur. But it's the same, there should be many more of them but there too we have synthesized.”
“Minotaur [le nom de code de Saïd, personnage clé de la série, ndlr], it's a special case, reveals Franck Philippon : it is also inspired by several sources, including one particularly important”, unlike agents who are not inspired by anyone in particular. “The character of Saïd should not have been identifiable, explains Mathieu Suc. We have muddied the waters, by relocating its history to Lille, among other things. But his relationship with his treating officer, played by Vincent Elbaz, went pretty much like in the series.”
The Spies of Terror: Benoît, the tried and tested firefighter
Through the character of the firefighter, Malika's husband, the DGSE agent played by Rachida Brakni, the production wanted to highlight other victims of the attacks, those we don't think about and who were nevertheless affected . “When we think of the victims we think of the people who were shot and who survived but there are also police officers, firefighters… who were on the front and who are in tatters, insists Mathieu Suc. Including big guys who have been with the psychologist for years. I always saw a strong man who worked for the services, attending all the conferences I gave. I learned shortly before writing the series that he had lost his best friend at the Bataclan and that he was going to the victims' aperitifs. It was important to show, through this firefighter, these people who were also knocked down that evening.”
