The Spies of Terror: we were on the set of the fascinating M6 series! – News Series on TV

In March 2023, AlloCiné was invited to go to the filming of the mini-series Les Spies de la Terror, currently broadcast on M6. Tuesday November 19, 2024 from 9:10 p.m., the channel invites its viewers to follow episodes three and four which conclude this fiction, adapted from the eponymous book by Matthieu Suc.

A duty to remember

Shared between Lille, Marseille, Paris, Orléans and Morocco, the implementation of this project took place over two and a half months (one part was completed in approximately 12 days). The mini-series was filmed in the studio of the production company Beaubourg TV in Thiais. This location was also the scene of the filming of flagship series of the small screen such as Balthazar, Vise le coeur or Profilage.

Perfectly designed to accommodate a “workplace drama” (a drama series in which the heroes evolve in their work environment), this location had several large sets to allow the teams of the series to work at the same time on different scenes.

Dealing with a particularly serious theme, it was imperative for Rodolphe Tissot to do justice to the real story and especially to its real protagonists. The director declared on our microphone: “The challenge of telling this story is exciting but we absolutely want to be impeccable.“

The director's vision

Actor Pierre Perrier (who plays Commander Alex Lebrun) confirmed these statements: “Rodolphe is great. He knows very well what he is doing. He is very picky. He has a lot of experience. We have a lot to do and we have a very fast pace, so we have to stay focused, but he's running his boat well!“

This great experience (Rodolphe Tissot directed the TV film Cleves and episodes of The Last Wave, So Be They, The Little Murders of Agatha Christie, etc.) precisely allowed the filmmaker to join The Spies of Terror. He remembered: “[Les producteurs, ndlr] came to see me because they liked what I had done on very different themes.“

“So, for me, there is something quite touching in entrusting me with this story, not because I had already done action scenes, but because they liked the way I treated the stories, the characters.”

“Television popularizes things a little too much”

Rodolphe Tissot added: “Television can sometimes have a tendency to want to be a little so educational, it simplifies. She popularizes things a little too much. Franck Philippon [le créateur et coscénariste, ndlr] managed to find a nice balance, I think, between keeping the complexity of the story we are telling, which takes place over a year, while making it approachable and exciting.”

Pierre Perrier concludes: “We are trying to pay tribute to the work that was done behind the scenes at the intelligence level in this whole story, because it is quite little known. We all have the same images in mind, but the general public doesn't know much about this whole journey.“

And to ensure 100% veracity of the sequences shown in The Spies of Terror, real agents of the DGSE and the DGSI were consulted! Real documentary work was thus carried out in order to offer a realistic vision at the heart of these events which forever marked the French.

The continuation and end of Spies of Terror can be discovered this evening on M6, from 9:10 p.m.