Twenty years later, Le Bigdil is reborn on RMC Story with Vincent Lagaf'. Audience success with 1.8 million viewers. Proof that redoing everything identically by banking on nostalgia, it works. Quite the opposite of a series which is also a hit on Netflix.
Twenty years. An eternity. But everything is still there. The “Gafettes” continue to blow kisses to the camera with their fingers. And completely assume this anachronistic role that we thought had disappeared at the beginning of this century, with MP3 players and Michaël Youn. “ No green plants », promised Vincent Lagaf in a recent interview with TV Magazine: “ There is Nadia, who directs music videos, short films and documentaries. And then Fanny, who was Gafette at “Just Price”. She went to Ibiza to open a real yoga school. They are not just beautiful, they have something. I wanted them to be equipped with microphones because they have repartee. »And then, « together, we mess around, we laugh… »
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Vincent Lagaf remained true to himself. He opens the show with that touch of self-deprecation that has always been his signature. Dressed in a blue and white Teddy, he recalls those years when the youth of France cultivated their “American” look like Billy Crawford in baggy on the stages of the Star Academy. Boom, it's running. Vincent Lagaf pretends to rediscover the stage, he wakes up the audience, who, docile, plays the game, miming a return to life after twenty years of sleep. He is touching, with tears in his eyes, he looks like a big teddy bear. It is not a simple reconstruction, nor a nostalgic exhibition. THE bigdil reborn. It was January 2, at 9:10 p.m. on RMC Story.
Then, a choreography begins. Like an ode to the 2000s, with dancers performing moves on Crazy in Love by Beyoncé, a hit from 2003. Vincent, as master of ceremonies, relaunches the room with the essential “ Make some noise! » to greet the troop: “ Well done guys, you rock! “. In the audience we shout “ Vincent! Vincent! Vincent! » Here, no one is afraid of doing too much. The cult of an animator from yesteryear? Whatever. And the audience intones this vibrant “ after after after after after » in five notes, repeated in chorus during football matches and in concerts. Vincent outbids his legendary “ Bip bip ! » before greeting: “ Good evening to everyone on the Bigdil set. It is with immense pleasure and incredible emotion that I find you again after twenty years. What happiness! »
Adrien will have the car
First candidate? Adrian, 26 years old. He grew up in a house where bigdil was part of the decor. Today it is “ccontent editor “. Lagaf responds as if he were arriving from the past into a future that escapes him: “ Ah, yes, it’s one of the new professions. So, are you scrolling? I learned a word, now we scroll. » The audience laughs. Then, without warning, he adds: “ And girls who shake their butts, you know? » Adrien smiled, slightly embarrassed. “ Ah yes, twerking. »
Bill, the synthetic alien who already kept Vincent company twenty years ago, appears on the screen with his sense of the valve: “ The President of the Republic, Mr Chirac, does he authorize all of this? » Vincent, without losing his smile, reminds him of the list of presidents since. We feel that he hesitates for a second, and that the desire for a sharp comment tickles him. But here, at bigdilno politics.
We move on to the first game. The centrifuge. A sort of giant washing machine. Adrien climbs in, with stuntman protection. The principle is simple: photos appear briefly on a screen, and he must answer questions while fighting against dizziness. Vincent explains, with this mixture of good-natured irony and calculated sadism: “ Obviously, you're going to wallow, you're going to fool yourself. But try to keep an eye on the screen. Five photos, five questions. »
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The levels are announced: 200 euros per correct answer. In the event of a clear round, Adrien could walk away with 1,000 euros. But Adrien will stumble after a few questions. “ It was a coffee in this photo, not a juice orange. » Adrien laughs too, but a little yellow, like someone who understands that he is there as much to amuse the gallery as to try his luck.
The crucial moment arrives. Vincent asks the fateful question: “ So, Adrien, either we go back for 30 seconds to try to go flawless, or we stop now and take what's behind the curtain. » The audience chants: “ The curtain! The curtain! » Adrien, as if he had no choice, repeats: “ The curtain, they want the curtain ! » Behind the curtain? A card game for 12.99 euros. The next candidate will discover a pair of badminton rackets for 40 euros. Due to inflation, gifts are no longer what they used to be.
Vincent spoke about it in his interview with TV Magazine: “ Today, making someone win 1,500 bucks feels like putting the sun back into their life. 20 years ago, winning 1,500 balls was common. We could win 5, 6, 7 cars per day. Today, that is no longer the goal. The waste of gifts is over. I see people who hesitate a lot more for 1,200, 1,300 balls. Before, they replayed a ten-day cruise at 4,000 balls. »And then same price for him, as entrusted to TV 7 days : he is paid “ 7 times less than before “. At the end of the show, during the final repechage game, Adrien will still leave with “the car”. A car, not a 12 euro gadget. “ Well done, brother, it’s just happiness », Vincent told him.
Florian has stars in his eyes
After Adrien, it’s the turn of Florian, presented as “ South Florian “. Vincent perceives a “ little accent » which makes him smile. Florian comes from Béziers, which he confirms with a slightly proud look. “ Ah, those are cities that make you dream, like Montpellier, Toulouse, Narbonne, Carcassonne », adds Lagaf', proud to display his detailed knowledge of the Occitanie region. The anecdote that connects the two men? Florian says he served Vincent, when he was very young, in his aunt's bar. Florian has a son, Ezio. Not of Italian origin, he explains with a laugh, just a first name that he liked. Then Florian declares “ hot like a churros » to be suspended by the feet and catch balls with a landing net several meters high, on a crane. “ Twenty years ago, I was behind the TV, and here I am, next to it. You don't know how crazy it is », he blurted out as he descended, out of breath but delighted.
The bigdilit's always that: absurd games, collective laughter, and Vincent Lagaf' as an eternally good-natured host, half master of ceremonies, half camp monitor. It still works. In the summer of 2023, in fact, during an interview for the release of his autobiography, Vincent told us about his beginnings as a GO (“nice organizer”) at Club Med, well before There is a sinkavant The Zoubidabefore the 1990s which would make him a star. A star, not for an abstract audience, but for “those people” behind the screen. Average, ordinary French people who found in his shows a form of joyful, sometimes cathartic escape.
Lagaf' belongs to this golden age of television, the one where a game could bring together seven million people every evening. The bet to relaunch the bigdil ? Won, in part. An audience peak of two million viewers on RMC Story, a modest channel in the fragmented audiovisual landscape. But if you're over 30, you remember. You remember Vincent who yelled at Bill, the blue alien (in reality, his friend Gilles), his orange suits, his schoolboy jokes, his “Curtain!” » which revealed flamboyant cars and made candidates cry with happiness.
The landscape has changed
At the time, Vincent told us, “ I had to get the antenna above 6 million every evening. From then on, no one came to bother me, I did what I wanted, I worked at the time I wanted, I recorded as much as I wanted. (…) Especially since we were afraid that I would get angry. So, if I wanted to do a combine harvester race, I told my manager and they found me two combine harvesters for Monday! »
Today, the landscape has changed. “ There are 28 channels, and we are not capable of creating 28 new programs with 28 new presenters “, he explains to TV Mag. “ So at some point, you have to go back to what worked. Why deprive yourself of resuming a show that worked? There are films that we rewatch, songs that we sing again, plays that we reenact, books that we reread. Why not do a Bigdil again, especially if the public is demanding? »
Nostalgia, then. An assumed repetition, almost claimed. But a small dose of repetition: the broadcast will not be daily: “ If the chain has the opportunity to buy me a heart-lung kit, I'll take it. But for now, I'm limiting myself to one prime time per week. » Nostalgia, Vincent Lagaf' embraces it. But in his words, we sense a deeper anguish: that of being frozen in one's own past, defeated by one's own “it was better before”. He confided: “ We had to find a producer. I was offered it four times and refused four times. I didn't want to make a sub-Bigdil. It would have been very difficult for me to hear in the street: “It was better before.” » And on Twitter, the comments reassure him: “ When we see the level of TV shows today, Bigdil would clearly still have its place in prime time access. Thank you for this moment of nostalgia. Nothing has aged. »
The Bigdil in the Squid Game era
Let us spare ourselves the lazy parallel between The Bigdil and the old refrain “bread and circuses”. Yes, people like to be entertained, and yes, they enjoy the familiarity of a TV veteran. While season 2 of Squid Game hit, distilling his cold criticism of capitalism and his empathy tinged with voyeurism for those in debt, the return of bigdil offers a disturbing, almost ironic contrast. A kind of Squid Game upside down. Here, no shattered lives or insurmountable debts. Just candidates who, with a little luck, leave with a car, and if not, return to their daily lives. No drama, no tragedy. A lightness in the relationship with money, almost exotic in a country where we prefer to blush or debate about it than to laugh about it.
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What makes you live The Bigdilit’s this visceral need for presence. Being there, together, physically. See familiar faces on the screen, who speak with a Béziers accent, who carry out ordinary jobs. A little France often mocked, sometimes despised. The one who doesn't always vote the way some would like them to vote, who gives her children Italian first names without the slightest transalpine trace in the family tree, and who keeps an intact tenderness for Lagaf'. For him, it's all a matter of freedom. A freedom that he proudly brandishes, engraved on his skin: on his calf, a tattoo. “RABQQA. ” Translation : ” Nothing to worry about, no matter what. »
