Flood of tears to be expected in France on Friday evening. Our barometer for this weather forecast of the heart? The broadcast, from 9:10 p.m., on TF1, of “Thank you Dorothée! “. Or a special program, presented by Nikos Aliagas, in honor of the woman who, from 1987 to 1997, accompanied the snacks, Wednesday afternoons and weekends of an entire generation of children who are now well into your thirties, or even into your forties.
The “Club Dorothée” was a thousand hours of programs per year (!), colossal audiences for the first channel and, above all, memories galore for millions of French people.
This prime time brings back those good times by summoning to the set the beloved figures from the time when AB Production happily filled the TF1 schedule – Jacky, Patrick Simpson Jones, Bernard Minet, Hélène Rolles and company – while having a very moved for those who left such as Ariane, Corbier, René and Framboisier des Musclées…
“I took a big blow to my heart from friendship”
Also present are personalities from this “Club Dorothée” generation. Among them, Amir, who came to express all his emotion and become the spokesperson for his students by explaining how important Dorothée was in his childhood life. When talking about this sequence several weeks after filming, the host confides that she was surprised by his reaction: “I didn't think he had been so marked…” Same thing when she met Lorie during rehearsals. They hugged each other. The singer did not hold back her tears.
Dorothée herself admits to having “almost broken down”. From the first minutes of filming: “I entered the set. The public reacted. And there, I felt, strangely, an emotion… Boom! It hit me in the heart, there…” “I took a big hit of friendship in my heart,” she repeats. In the space of two hours, she found “the millions of friends” that she celebrated in one of her hits.
At the end of “Club Dorothée”, the host withdrew from the spotlight, rarely coming out of her reserve. This is perhaps what explains why his image among his public has remained intact, as if frozen in the tenderness felt for an idealized past. We ask her if she is aware of being, dare we say the word, an icon. “That’s nice,” she replies, but she refuses this qualifier, claiming to have done her work in an “honest, sincere, friendly” manner. “We did things seriously, while messing around, in quotes, but I wasn't aware that it had such a great magnitude. »
-“We created a link between family and school”
You could say it was just TV. Except it was more than that. The “Club Dorothée” is, for many, a piece of intimate history. “The kids who couldn't go on vacation were with us, so they weren't alone. We created a link between family and school,” recognizes the main person concerned. So, perhaps not an icon but a mother figure, or a big sister, a good friend.
At the time, gloomy minds, led by Ségolène Royal, played moral panic and predicted that the show would generate a generation of imbeciles. The time that has passed allows us to see who has become what. The “Club Dorothée” was the gateway to manga in France. THE Dragon Ball Z, Nicky Larson and others Cat’s Eyes have become part of popular culture. “It was very difficult to impose them. But it was good to offer something else. The important thing, in fact, was not really the criticisms of adults, but the feelings of the viewers themselves. The children liked it, they knew it was a cartoon,” says Dorothée. As a result, almost thirty years after the end of the show, she received wonderful testimonials in the mail: “People wrote to me to say: 'Thanks to you, I make manga, I do animation.' »
“We were told: ‘Go ahead, go for it!’”
If the memories are so strong, it is also because the “Club Dorothée” was a field of experimentation. Today, would the absurd poetry of “No pity for croissants” still be produced? Nothing is less certain. “It was a period when we could try to create, to do. We proposed ideas, we discussed them. We didn't do market research. And we were told “Go ahead, go for it!” »
Our file on Club Dorothée
The nostalgia experienced undoubtedly tends to embellish things, but it is impossible to remain indifferent to this tribute show which also holds up to viewers of yesteryear a mirror of the passing of time. It is enough to hear a few notes of Himalayan snowsof Nicolas and Marjolaine or from To make a songperformed in the show (Dorothée has also sold 20 million albums!), so that the magic happens and brings tears of mixed melancholy and joy to flow.
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